In 43 years covering high school football, the past 40 from my post here at the BCR, I’ve learned there’s a lot to watch for and hear from the sidelines.

A small sampling of the things you hear are not fit for a family newspaper and there are some inside play calls that I’m not at liberty to repeat out of respect for my coaching friends.

Princeton coach Ryan Pearson has a most entertaining and unique vocabulary of play calls that I’ve heard on the Tiger sidelines the past nine seasons, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy. There’s just some things that happen on the sidelines that stay on the sidelines.

Here’s a sample of what’ve I’ve heard this season on the sidelines covering our four Bureau County teams from Bureau Valley, Hall, Princeton and St. Bede.

The No. 1 command I hear, without a doubt, is a simple one: “Watch the ball!”

Now, I’ve never played football outside of neighborhood games growing up in the little hotbed of Atlanta, Ill., where the days ran long with sports. But seems to me that’d be the most obvious thing to watch for on the football field.

There are other things to “watch for” like:

“Watch the quarterback”

“Watch the fake”

“Watch the belly option”

Then there are these commands:

“Stay in your lanes”

“Read your keys”

“See it”

“Eyes up”

“Wake up”

“Let’s go”

“Get off the field”

“Don’t lose the quarterback”

“Got to be tighter”

“Pay attention”

“Nothing cheap”

And a few other football slang:

“Belly belly”

“Thunder”

“Cat”

“Pass”

“Water”

“Flex”

“4’s up.” This is for the team tradition to put four fingers up to signal the start of the fourth quarter when they need to dig down for something little extra.

“How did he do that?” A new one and my favorite this year was when a Princeton player on the sidelines was amazed when teammate Casey Etheridge broke off a long touchdown run at Mercer County.

So suffice to say, it’s always entertaining walking the sidelines for a football game and I’ve been privileged to do so the past five decades.

Kevin Hieronymus has been the BCR Sports Editor at the BCR since 1986. He has also covered Illinois high school football for the Tazewell News in Morton and the Peoria Journal Star