Monday, July 29, 2019
By Brian Dzenis
If Jason Matti was musically inclined, he could give Johnny Cash a run for his money with his own version of “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
The 37-year-old Lowellville man has an argument to be declared the Mahoning Valley’s biggest high school football fan. When it comes to being the most well-traveled, there’s no contest.
The man who goes by “Sykotyk” (pronounced psychotic) on Twitter travels the country every fall to see high school football and meticulously documents his adventures on social media and his website.
Since 2010, he’s seen 940 games across 42 states.
“I’ll see a town or I’ll see a stadium and I just think, ‘that’s a place I’d like to see a game at,’” Matti said. “I know Ohio and Pennsylvania pretty well and while there’s a lot I’ve seen, I haven’t been there for a game. I just make a point of ‘this year, this is where I’m going.’”
His 2018 season took him through 11 states starting in Tennessee and ending in Texas while watching 118 games.
Matti is originally from Greenville, Pa., but now resides in Lowellville with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. He declined to say what he does for a living, but described himself as self-employed to explain how he finds the time and resources for these trips.
“I work for myself and being my own boss, I set my own hours,” Matti said. “Last year, I worked maybe half the year. I live a cheap kind of life where I spend money when I need to and make sure there’s money to do the things I want to do.”
He does almost all of his traveling with either a car or SUV depending on the passengers. He’ll either travel with his wife and daughter or meet with friends in certain states. If he’s alone, he keeps a mattress in the back of his SUV to sleep on if he needs a break. He sleeps in hotels at his destinations.
Matti isn’t out to see five-star prospects or the best teams, just stadiums and towns with character. He’s found the smaller the school, the better.
“The smaller stadiums tend to be more unique. All these bigger stadiums built today are all aluminum with the 6- to 8-lane track around it and turf,” Matti said. “For schools like Cleveland Heights, North Royalton and Medina Highlands, if wasn’t for the colors you wouldn’t know you were at a different stadium.”
Which stadiums stood out from the rest?
New York’s Olean High plays football in a baseball stadium built in 1926 and once hosted Jackie Robinson in 1947.
Graham Field in Wilkinsburg, Pa., is even older, dating to 1916 and sports a roof over the concrete stands. Matti calls the “Stone Castle” in Bristol, Tenn., the most iconic. It’s a football field surrounded by Medieval Gothic architecture.
“It’s built like a castle. There’s a full rock wall around the whole facility,” Matti said. “It has lookout towers and turrets and is mostly all concrete and rock, but they’re redoing it with aluminum [seats].”
Locally, Matti has been to 24 stadiums in The Vindicator’s coverage area and Sebring impressed the most.
“For a little school, they have a nice concrete stadium that’s tucked right behind the high school,” Matti said. “Shaker Heights is another good one [in Ohio] as it’s built right into the high school.”
But somebody has to stand above the rest. To find the site of Matti’s most memorable stadium and football experience, one has to go to Grass Range, Mt., a town that was recorded as having 110 people in the 2010 census.
It was the site of a 6-man football game between winless Grass Range-Winnett – a co-op where two schools combine to field a team – against winless Rosebud in both team’s regular-season finale.
“Grass Range is aptly named because all you see in every direction is rolling hills of grass. Their stands could hold 10 people, but nobody sits in the stands,” Matti said. “They just have a rope tied to posts on the sideline and the fans stand on the sideline and as play moves up and down the field, so do the fans.
“This game, which had maybe 80 people at it and was being televised on local public access.”
With just eight players, Grass Range-Winnett defeated Rosebud 39-36 on its Senior Day, which featured the home side’s lone senior explaining to those in attendance that he was headed to a local community college to become a diesel mechanic.
“It was such a pure moment that so many take for granted across Ohio in the last week of the season,” Matti said. “Here was this kid in the middle of nowhere still getting his due.”
The eight states Matti has yet to see a game in are Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.
He’ll save trips to the two non-continental states for when his daughter is older.
Best state for spectators?
Iowa.
Do any states have a great system for classifying teams and running a postseason?
Texas and Ohio are Matti’s top two, but Indiana’s approach of basing divisions by team success instead of enrollment is good too.
Where is he going this year?
Georgia, Texas, Iowa, Indiana, New York and Pennsylvania. He will likely see his 1,000th game this fall. How many games does he watch a week? Four at minimum with some states allowing him to attend more by having Thursday games or games in different time slots on Fridays and Saturdays.
What did he learn from seeing so many games in so many places?
“In this country, we’re kind of alike. Whether I’m in Montana, Florida, Louisiana, Washington, Michigan or Kentucky, everyone thinks we’re so different from each other and we’re really not,” Matti said. “People don’t get outside of their groups long enough to realize we’re not so different.
“We think too much about being more special than one another when we’re all the same.”