Family, Friends, and Football

For more than 20 years, Adam Finkelman has begun Thanksgiving morning the same way. He wakes up, fires off a few texts to friends urging them to come to Godwin Park for the annual Thanksgiving Day touch football game. He then laces up his cleats, grabs breakfast for his teammates from the Kolache Factory and heads to the park in Meyerland, the neighborhood where he grew up. 

It doesn’t matter if the players are exhausted from a late night with old friends at Little Woodrow’s, or if there’s a torrential downpour outside. This Turkey Day ritual persists against all odds. And the only marker of the passage of time each year is the inevitable change in the players’ athletic prowess. While the younger boys grow stronger and faster, the older men tend to slow down. 

MAKING MEMORIES Brothers Adam and David Finkelman go head to head during the annual Thanksgiving game.

“When you get older, you forget that you can’t move how you used to,” said David Finkelman, the eldest of the Finkelman brothers. “I’m fit, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to run a four-four-forty [yard dash] ever again.” 

David, 39, speaks fondly of his teenage years, when he dominated the game with his athleticism and speed. Now, he says he’s satisfied if he makes a couple of strong plays. 

For others, the bar for success is even lower. “For a while, winning was very important,” said Keith Shaftel, 73, part of the original group of players. “Then, for the last few years, if I could walk off and all my toes were pointing in the same direction, it was a win.” 

The annual football tradition traces back to the 1960s, when David’s father, Alan, and his contemporaries in Meyerland like Keith played pickup football and softball together on the weekends. When David was a teenager and a student at Bellaire High School, he and his friends joined their dads. Soon, they formalized the holiday tradition of a game between the fathers and sons. 

(Top row) David Finkelman, Alan Finkelman, Danny Shaftel, Dean Zubowski, Scott Bernstein, Steven Shannon; (middle row) Josh Finkelman, Nick Barrow, Noah Finkelman, Levi Finkelman, Adam Finkelman; (front row) James Reed Long, Sean Kantor, Bryan Binder, and Brooke Kantor take a breather after the game.

As David and his high school friends went off to college, they made it a point to continue to return for the game. The night before Thanksgiving, they’d all get together at Little Woodrow’s. The next day they’d wake up early and play ball before their Thanksgiving feasts. David’s younger brothers Adam and Joshua also joined, and more recently, their two younger half-brothers, Levi and Noah, who are both teens, have participated. 

On some occasions, Godwin Park was packed, and the game was relocated to Horn Elementary or Johnston Middle School. But David said most players like to stick with Godwin Park because it’s nostalgic. 

Some of the original players, now in their 70s, have retired from the game, instead cheering and taking photos from the sidelines. Younger players like David have graduated to the older team, which includes anyone over the age of 30. 

“It’s funny to now be the older guy,” Dean said. “You feel like a superpower when you’re running against these older guys. Now, you’re on the other side of the field.” 

Levi, David, Adam, Josh, and Noah Finkelman, and their dad Alan

Keith, who no longer plays, said he’s enjoyed watching the younger kids grow up and eventually outplay him. His son Danny still plays every year. 

“There’s nothing like seeing your kid become your peer and then blow right past you,” Keith said. The game is like a metaphor for life in some ways, where Keith’s children have joined him in running a gem business. 

The matchup has never exactly been fair. The young guys can usually outrun their elders. Still, the game is always close, the players say, and one way or another, it becomes competitive. 

“The older guys are good at manipulating the size of the field and the rules,” Dean said. “They’ll do whatever they can.” 

A recurring point of contention is how many seconds defensive players must count before they can rush the quarterback. 

Adam Finkelman runs towards the end zone. Also pictured are (from left) Josh Finkelman, Ian Hartman, Noah Finkelman, Andrew Rubenstein, Ryan Hecht, and David Finkelman. 

“All of a sudden you’ll hear people yelling about how someone is counting one alligator, two alligator too fast,” Adam said. 

The game usually starts out friendly but eventually gets more heated. There was one particularly standout year that all the players vividly remember. A younger player wore metal cleats, which provide superior traction to plastic ones but can be dangerous to other players. During that game, the players’ cleat slashed another player in the calf causing a deep wound. 

“I had never seen a wound like this before,” David said. “There was a lot of blood.” Needless to say, metal cleats are no longer allowed. 

Adam, now 29 years old, sits at the inflection point between the young and the old. This year will mark the last time he plays with the younger team and in some ways signals a turning point as the balance shifts towards more new players and fewer of the original guys. But even as he transitions to a new team, Adam says he’ll hold onto this Thanksgiving tradition, something he looks forward to each year. 

 “It’s just a great way to spend Thanksgiving morning.”