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Friday Night Lights: When duty calls -- PC North's Dustin Decker ready to serve

 
By Jenni Carlson | Published: October 9, 2009    Comment on this article Leave a comment

Dustin Decker immediately noticed the second game on the pocket schedules that had been left inside Putnam City North’s football locker room.

photo - Putnam City North football player Dustin Decker runs onto the field carrying a flag on Sept. 11 in honor of those who died in the attacks. PHOTO BY RICHARD T. CLIFTON
Putnam City North football player Dustin Decker runs onto the field carrying a flag on Sept. 11 in honor of those who died in the attacks. PHOTO BY RICHARD T. CLIFTON

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Not because it was the Panthers’ home opener. Not because it was against rival Putnam City, either.

It was because of the date — Sept. 11.

"We’ve got to honor that in some way,” the senior lineman thought as he looked at the schedule one day after a preseason practice.

Decker ended up leading the team onto the field that night with a big American flag in hand.

No doubt he is patriotic. He has a stars-and-stripes license plate on his Jeep. He has a fascination with the military that dates back to toddlerhood. His buddies even joke sometimes that he loves America so much that he should marry it.

In a way, Decker has.

The 17-year-old has already enlisted in the Army National Guard. He has yet to go through basic training — that will come only two days after he graduates in May — but he does two days of drill with his unit one weekend a month.

Decker is not alone, not even at PC North. Two other players have already enlisted, Miles Holladay in the Army National Guard and Conner Terry in the Marines, and a couple others plan to join the ranks in the coming months.

In a sport where players are sometimes called warriors or fighters, that is usually misplaced language, hyperbole gone amuck. Not with these young men.

Dustin Decker is a soldier, and it has nothing to do with how he performs on the football field.

A passion for military
Andrea and Kevin Decker wanted a strong name for their first-born son. They chose Dustin because it means valiant fighter — and because he was the only boy in a house full of sisters.

"We knew he’d need to be a fighter,” his mother said, laughing.

They never dreamed how their son would live up to his name.

The military became his fascination. There was one "Top Gun”-like movie that he watched over and over again. The 3-year-old watched it so much that he started reciting the lines, even though he didn’t know what all the words meant.

As he got older, he watched war documentaries on the History Channel and read military books in his free time.

But when the Sept. 11 attacks happened, the resulting invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan played out on television.

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