It’s Week 10 of the high school football season and that always brings a degree of sadness. Sure, some teams (OK, most teams in this convoluted Louisiana playoff system) will move on to the post-season next week. But some will not.

And that means some kids will be taking off the pads for the last time this weekend.

There’s nothing quite like the cycle of a high school football season. The winter weight lifting workouts, when it’s hard to imagine any actual games might ever be played.

Then the tortuous summer, when athletes have to report for workouts and drills at ridiculous hours in the morning when most of their classmates are still in the rack. At this point, the season might be right around the corner, but it’s too hot to even think about that.

And then there’s the scrimmage … and the jamboree … and they all seem so important. Except that they’re not.

Think about all the things the happen during a season. First of all, it starts in sweat and ends in blankets. Players suffer season-ending injuries and all of the work they have done is for nothing. Every week is it own vignette, with winners and losers, heroes and goats, one play making the difference in justifying all the work that was put in that week. But next week is always there.

You get in the middle of this 10-week routine of Friday nights and you think it will never end. And then it does. Rather suddenly.

Basketball, and to some degree baseball, have become year-round sports. But there’s a special time in the calendar set aside for football.

The little kid who starting playing in the fourth grade with pants that were too long and a helmet that didn’t quite fit right is suddenly a senior who played his last game.

Whether it’s this week or next and any of those that follow, it always comes to a sudden end. And it’s a tough walk off that field for the last time.