By SARAH DOOLITTLE, Four Points News

Steiner Ranch resident Kaylene Hindman said that the story of life in Odessa, Texas. in 1988 is more than any book, movie or TV show; it’s the story of her life, her town and of the people and sport she loves. Next year will mark 30 years since the iconic season of Permian High School football chronicled in the book “Friday Night Lights” which inspired a movie and TV series for five seasons. She said the story makes the town appear different than it really was on many levels.

Hindman likes to share about the positive place she called home, which happened to beat Vandegrift in football on Sept. 1 earlier this season.

Born and raised in Odessa, Hindman’s parents were pillars in the community. Her mom was a well-known counselor at the middle school and her father a local pilot. In addition to these two “amazing people,” as Hindman describes them, she and her sister had lots of extended family in town.

Those connections and those with the town that knew and loved her parents were essential to Hindman and her sister when, in 1985, their mom died from a malignant melanoma. Hindman was just 14 and a freshman in high school and her sister 10.

After her mom’s death, “The people in Odessa were amazing to me. Everybody knew our mom and everybody was super wonderful.”

Besides the community coming out to support the family, “I had the best dad in the world before and after my mom died.” He took care of Hindman and her sister as well as his own mother, who’d lost both legs to diabetes; nursed Hindman’s mom while she was dying of cancer; and looked after his mother-in-law after Hindman’s mother’s death.

One member of the community who stepped up for Hindman after her mother’s death was her freshman high school biology teacher, who at the time set up Hindman with a Permian football player, Mike Winchell. That same teacher ended up being Hindman’s cheer sponsor and eventually moved to Lakeway, where she and Hindman continue to see and support each other.

That football player, Mike Winchell, became the quarterback who ended up being featured heavily in the book “Friday Night Lights”.

“Friday Night Lights”
Author Buzz Bissinger lived in Odessa for the entire 1988 football season researching “Friday Night Lights”.

“He just hung out with us,” said Hindman. “He would come to dinner, our families would have him over to dinner, or we’d take him out to parties with us… He was kind of one of us.”

That made it that much stranger when the book was published and Hindman felt betrayed and confused by its sometimes negative portrayals of the town she loved.

“We liked (Bissinger) but at the same time I felt like he hurt a lot of the people that I cared about,” she said.

She acknowledges that, “there’s some truths in the book,” especially its depiction of the community’s dedication to football. She said, “It brought light to Odessa,” though she wishes the book could have focused instead on the following year when the team did win the state championship.

There were also factual inaccuracies in the movie, which depicted the team losing in the finals to Dallas Carter High School at the Astrodome instead of in the semi-finals in Austin. She speculated that maybe, “It’s more exciting to change (the story) a little bit.”

For Hindman, football — nearly a religion in Texas — was excitement enough. “You can’t help but grow up in Permian and not be born and raised into football. Even as a girl,” said Hindman, who also played tennis competitively.

Hindman was one of five girls and five guys who cheered at Permian football games, in addition to the Pepettes who led cheers from the stands.

Football season meant a workweek for the cheerleaders and Pepettes that started long before Friday night.

“Our whole Sunday consisted of making the run-through signs,” that players ran through when entering the field. In the weeks before games, each Pepette had an assigned player to whom she provided snacks and a large, hand painted wooden yard sign. Cheerleaders were responsible for taking care of the coaches with treats and small gifts of encouragement.

A game day meant waking early and making certain to wear the correct combination of top and skirt from the ten uniform choices issued to each girl.

In the field house behind the stadium, the entire school gathered for Friday morning pep rallies. The band always played the theme from Hawaii Five-0, and cheerleaders explained the agenda to students while the football team arrived and had a seat in the front row of the stands.

Hindman remembers how loud those pep rallies were and that, even before she was a cheerleader, “You’d get, I guess, five miles from Permian and you could hear the band from there,” across the vast, flat Texas landscape.

In the evening everyone headed to Rattler Stadium to prepare for the game. “The stadium was just electric,” said Hindman. “There wasn’t a seat in the house that was open,” with crowds chanting the school’s “Mojo” motto and the band spelling it out on the field during halftime.

“Young, old — it didn’t matter. People had had those seats forever. It was just tradition,” explained Hindman. “They’re going to go every Friday night to the Friday night football game, every weekend.”

After games, everyone hung out at the school. Players showered, and as they filed out of the locker room they were greeted by the community — “idolized” as Hindman describes it — before the kids headed out for a night of fun.

“A father first”
Though her football team didn’t win the state championship that year, Hindman’s memories of high school are made sweeter by the events that followed.

During her senior year of high school, Hindman was able to be a member of the homecoming court. She received multiple homecoming mums and a photo from that night shows her covered in them, clutching her dad’s arm, his face beaming with love for his daughter.

Her dad walked her out on the field that night. “I’ve just never seen my dad so proud,” she said. “He never got to walk me down the aisle… It was very, very special.”

In March of 1990, during her freshman year of college, Hindman lost her beloved father when he was killed in an airplane crash as the result of a faulty plane.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful my dad was,” said Hindman. “When he died it was all over the news. He was a father first… He was the dad of all dads.”

After her dad’s death, Hindman’s sister was able to stay with a family member while Hindman finished college as quickly as she could, graduating with an MBA. After graduation, she moved back to Odessa to live with her mom’s mom.

“I hung out with my grandmother and all her 80-year-old friends. That was my life,” she said with a grin.

Hindman ended up dating her old high school boyfriend Winchell again for eight more years before meeting her husband Todd at a work event.

Remembering those special years
Hindman doesn’t visit Odessa as much these days, due not only to the distance but to the sad memories and a drive back home to Austin that includes a trip to the cemetery to place flowers on her parents’ and grandparents’ graves. All her remaining family members in Odessa have passed away.

Still Hindman feels a strong attachment to the place and its people.”I felt like coaches and teachers, they just cared… The people who were put in my life at such an early age from this school ended up being such a support network for me and still continue to be.”

“The program and the traditions and the people when I was there, it was just probably some of the best years of my life,” Hindman said.

There is one thing from that time that Hindman emphatically does not remember fondly: her 1980s hair. “How did we get more than two of us in a car,” she joked of the hair sported by her and her friends that involved lots of hairspray and very tall bangs.

Football remains a central part of Hindman’s family life. Daughter Alli is away at college at the University of Oklahoma, but son Luke plays football for Vandegrift.

Hindman now has traditions and superstitions of her own — including giving a diet Coke to the same man at every game. Also she said, “I probably get into sports more than some,” cheering loudly enough to make up for the grandma and grandpa who never got to watch their grandson play the game that meant so much to their whole family.

After all the loss, Hindman has learned a thing or two from her family, mentors and the “clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose” spirit of “Friday Night Lights.”

“It kind of all works out,” she said of her life. “You slowly start looking back and going, Wow, it all kind of did work out.”