Bright and early friday morning, football players arrive dressed in khaki pants and a Leopard Football Polo to the weekly Breakfast With Champions and chapel meeting before school. All looks normal when players drive into the parking lot, but when inside linebacker Daaron McFarling approaches you will see a pirate flag flying high from the back of his black truck.

A pirate flag on the home of the Leopards doesn’t make sense to some as students are unsure of what’s going on with the skull and crossbones.

“I think the pirate flag is about the ‘Burn the Boats’ saying the football team did last year,” junior Dom Mazero said.

Even the Leopard coaching staff isn’t completely sure about the mysterious tradition.

“I’m not really sure when it started,” defensive coordinator Ryan Cox said.  “I know that it has something to do with Daaron’s older brother, they had a tradition with the pirate flags.”

The skull and crossbones has been an underlying theme throughout the history of the Leopard football program. During practice, defensive players wear a black mesh practice jersey with a skull and crossbones on the front.

“My brother started [the tradition] when he went to Lovejoy in 2007, when Coach Thompson bought the black defensive jerseys with the school that have crossbones on them,” senior Daaron McFarling said.

The tradition is about more than a flag and jersey; it comes with a message that the team has to keep in their heads.

“To me, I like the symbolic meaning of the pirate flag, meaning that, you better watch out for whoever is running behind that flag,” Cox said.  “A group of guys that have to have what you have in order to live, and we carry that mentality out onto the football field, as a defense. What they have is our football, and we want it back and we will do anything to get it.”

To the football team, the pirate flag is not only a flag with a skull and crossbones on it; it’s a reminder, a message, a mind set to leave it all on the field.

“My brother started flying the flag out of his truck,” McFarling said.  “My brother says it means “take no prisoners.’”