Will have the fingers crossed for Selma High School Friday night when the Bears open the season against Reedley. If you read Wednesday's column, you know Selma is one loss from the Central Section Record of 34 straight, going back to October of 2003.

A couple things I didn't have room to include: The most excruciating loss of last season for Selma was even more painful than simply blowing a 21-0 lead. At the end of the game against Chowchilla, Selma was driving near the goal line with a chance to win in the final seconds. The Bears rushed up the middle on third and short, there was a big pileup, and then they hurried up to spike the ball to stop the clock before the officials could measure. As it turned out, Selma hadn't actually gotten the first down and thus they had spiked on fourth down and lost the game.

That's the kind of stuff that has to happen to keep a 33-game losing streak going.

Another thing not included: Selma hasn't always been bad. They've never been a football powerhouse. When your team loses for a few years you tend to forget the old days. Selma had some good teams back in the '80s. Not terrible in the '90s. Back in those days, Selma and its rival, Kingsburg, used to burn an "S" or "K" into the other team's football field with oil or weedkiller.

Now, that stuff doesn't go on much, for one, because Selma never wins, and two, there has been a push the last decade or so to get rid of anything that borders on vandalism, which I'll reluctantly admit is probably a good thing.

In 1991, according to someone who doesn't want his or her name printed, Selma students waited and waited for Kingsburg's senior class to pull some great prank, until it was late in the week and obvious Kingsburg students weren't going to do anything. So a few Selma students stole the Bear right off the front of the basketball gym to fire up their own football team.

The person who helped pulled the self-prank can't remember who won that year, which is the beauty of high school sports. Matters a lot at the time. Sixteen years later, you can hardly remember your school mascot.