By: Jim Hunt for the Harrison County News and Journal
Last week I found myself sitting on the narrow, aluminum bleachers of the Indian Land High School football stadium in South Carolina, a place where Friday-night legends are usually born under glaring halogen lights. On this evening, however, the scoreboard was dark, the concession stands were closed, and the only thing on the field was a sea of folding chairs—556 of them, one for every eighth grader in Avery’s middle-school class.
Our granddaughter Avery—thirteen going on unstoppable—was among the neatly dressed students waiting to cross a makeshift stage. From a distance she looked like a tiny white sail bobbing in an ocean of teenage hope. Around me, parents and grandparents clutched bouquets that would wilt long before the memories did. We were an orchestra of expectation, tuning up for that moment when a single name is read and the whole section erupts in applause as though an Olympic medal has just been awarded.
It struck me that the future files past us in exactly this way: one tentative step at a time, backed by the thunder of family pride. These young people live in a world that news anchors love to describe with words like uncertain and unprecedented, but you wouldn’t have known it from the energy in that stadium. Their worries are immediate—Friday-night football, dance competitions, first kisses behind the bleachers, science labs that fizz and smoke, art classes where the paint seldom stays on the canvas. Global economics and foreign policy can wait; there are geometry quizzes to pass and homecoming games to win.
As Avery’s row stood to move forward, I caught her laughing with her friends—heads thrown back, a contagious joy that refused to be quieted by her teacher’s raised eyebrow. In that flash I saw her mother, my daughter, making the same march decades ago. Different school, different state, same grin. Time, it seems, wears a familiar uniform. It circles the track, hands off the baton, and starts anew while we in the stands marvel at how fast the relay is run.
When my generation left eighth grade, we worried about the draft lottery numbers on the evening news and whether the coal mine that had employed our fathers would still be there when we graduated. Today’s students face their own headlines—climate change, artificial intelligence, and a digital world that never sleeps—but in the cool shade of youth their optimism feels indestructible. Maybe that’s why ceremonies like this matter. They remind the rest of us that progress is rarely a sprint and almost never a straight line; it is a steady procession of bright young faces daring the world to keep up.
As the final name was called, the 556 young teenagers jumped to their feet, as the principal declared the class officially promoted. Avery gathered with some friends for some quick pictures and made her way through the crowd. Her sister, Emery spotted her first and gave her a well- deserved hug, as we lined up for our own special photo. Standing next to her, I realized that our job as elders is less about steering the ship and more about providing a reliable lighthouse—steady, visible, and unwavering no matter how unpredictable the seas become.
High school looms now—four fast years of lockers slamming, drivers’ tests, heartbreaks, and breakthroughs. If Avery studies hard, she might earn a scholarship; if she discovers a passion, she might draft the blueprint for a lifelong career. But whether she becomes a lawyer, a sculptor, or a city manager, I hope she always remembers the feeling of standing in that line: the hum of possibility, the chorus of family cheers, the sense that the world was pausing—just for a second—to let her take the next steps in life’s marathon. Meanwhile, four years from now, hopefully I’ll be in those same uncomfortable bleachers, watching time’s onward march and ready to clap until my hands ache when the next name is called.
