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Byline: Fred Mann
Sep. 2--On Friday nights in the fall, many rural Kansas towns assume the shape of their high school football fields. The townspeople fill the bleachers to focus their collective will on victory, and the other features of the town -- the square, the shops, the co-ops, the tidy residential streets -- fade irrelevantly into the gathering dusk.
So it was in Andale on Friday when the 2006 prep football season began around the state. As the Indians met Andover in their opener, the packed stands shimmered under the lights. Men leaned on the chain-link fence surrounding the field to concentrate on the game, while behind them other fans greeted each other and milled, coeds took photos of each other with cell phones, and the drums of the school band beat on into the night. After the…