LINWOOD - The coach wanted things to be normal. Typical. Routine.
He talked strategy in the pregame meeting. He told his players to stick to their habits. He told them to do what high school football players do on opening night - run on the field and pound each other on the shoulder pads, then line up and collide with the other kids in the different-colored uniforms.
"It was all about football," Mainland coach Bob Coffey said of the team's season opener.
Mainland lined up and played a tough, physical game against Hammonton in the Cape-Atlantic National Division game on a cool, clear Friday night before a huge crowd on the Mustangs' home field off Route 9.
Hammonton won, 23-7, using a sturdy defense and its signature powerful ground game. For the Blue Devils, that's normal.
But there was a moment before the game when all the trappings of the event - the lights high above the field, the band and the cheerleaders, the capacity-plus crowd in the home bleachers of the stadium known as the "Mustang Corral" - framed a scene that transcended sport.
That's when Mainland's players entered on the field in full uniforms for the first time since four of their teammates were killed in an Aug. 20 automobile accident.
And that's when Hammonton's players lined up to form a path through which the Mustangs would enter the field, and offered handshakes, hugs and high-fives, and every heart rose into every throat, and things weren't normal anymore.
Things were special.
"It's really uplifting," said John Brenner, whose son Casey was one of the four players who were killed in the accident on the Garden State Parkway. "It's keeping us all afloat."
Ted Khoury, whose son Dean also was killed, seemed to feel the same way. Ted Khoury wore Dean's No. 67 jersey.
"It wasn't so much about the game for him as the camaraderie," Ted Khoury said. "He was about wearing the jersey on game day, so I'm going to wear the jersey on game day."
It was some scene, with around 3,000 spectators on Mainland's side of the field, and many of them wearing specially made shirts that honored the four boys. "Mustangs Forever," every other shirt seemed to read.
There was a golf cart outfitted for the occasion, with a football at each corner of the roof with the jersey numbers of the four boys: 20 for Casey Brenner, 34 for Edgar Bozzi, 67 for Dean Khoury, and 47 for Nick Connor.
