King’s Fork High School proved that its young tradition on the gridiron can draw its own crowd as the school held its first-ever alumni flag football game on Friday night ahead of the annual Midnight Madness practice for the current varsity team.

“I think it was fun for all, I think it was productive for all, and a big success, for just kind of putting it all together within the last two, three weeks,” Bulldogs coach Joe Jones said.

He said he was not sure how many alumni players would participate. There ended up being 11, and they seemed to bring far more than just themselves to King’s Fork’s stadium.

For the inaugural instance of the game, Jones said, “I was amazed at the crowd that we had.”

He said his wife told him one of the other parents stopped counting at 300.

The Midnight Madness practice has drawn around 100 people in the past, “so it was a much bigger crowd and a whole lot more of the students made up for the biggest increase in the crowd.”

Jones and King’s Fork activities director Randy Jessee both said they were pleased to see current students taking part of the school event.

Between the entrance fees for spectators and alumni players, as well as Midnight Madness T-shirt sales, the event raised nearly $700 for the King’s Fork football program, Jones said.

Because the school is so young, Jones said, “We don’t have tradition yet,” but he said what could help establish some is this alumni flag football game with players who were with King’s Fork in its earliest years.

“We get to build the tradition basically from the ground up, and those guys are the guys that started it all,” he said of some of Friday night’s participants.

One of them was T.J. Santora, older brother to rising senior Duke Santora, who has been a prominent part of the Bulldogs’ rushing attack.

“It was fun just to come back out here under the lights again and play on this field, kick it around, go around with the boys,” T.J. Santora said.

He was part of a team that featured mostly older alumni players compared to its opponent on Friday, and the “old heads” as they called themselves prevailed, 56-42.

The game featured a couple of current Bulldogs coaches, Jamie Hornsby and Sha’ka Miller, who played as the current KF players watched.

Hornsby said, “As a coach, I just wanted to show them that I practiced what I preach.”

Miller said he felt good about how the game went, “especially for it to be a last minute thing and not a lot of guys knowing about it.”

“After talking to Coach Jones, we’re going to start promoting it earlier next year so that the guys that are out of town can have the opportunity to come back, and even considering having Nansemond (River High School) alumni and Lakeland (High School) alumni coming back,” he said.