In these 1940s pictures, the real heart of American football was on the high school field

Football’s current climate of injury-prone introspection is a welcome reprieve from the unbridled machismo characteristic of the game. But no amount of helicopter parenting or clinical studies will diminish the esteem held for the contact sport in the psyche of American high schoolers.

One of a handful of the Office of War Information’s photographers with lenses trained on the home front during World War II, Esther Bubley was hardly older than the students she photographed at D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson High School in 1943. And her appreciation for the youthful aspirations of her subjects is apparent amidst the chaotic action of this late afternoon matchup. Bubley deftly frames the sideline view of an American pastime as a spectacle worth paying attention to—a dialogue between players and attendees bent on their own specific outcomes.

The mis-en-scène of mid-century football is Rockwellian Americana at its peak. What some might call “simpler times.” But between all the Fonzie leather and bobby-sox brouhaha, these youngsters face an uncertain future. Entering the workforce at wartime, some might even be shipping off to Europe soon, where no amount of pigskin could prepare them for what they’d find.

Photographs by Esther Bubley courtesy Library of Congress.