Dad and daughter catch 'all the great memories' covering Eastern Alamance High School football

Bailey Pennington Allison closes her laptop after work. It’s 5 p.m. on a Friday, but her second job has just begun.

By the time her father, Alan Pennington, picks her up, she’s got her video camera ready. They pile into his gray Honda, debating what food to pick up on the way – Cook Out or Wendy’s? 

It’s an important question. They have an hour-long drive ahead, and likely won’t be back until midnight. 

Tonight, they’re headed from Bailey’s home in Graham to Greensboro. More specifically, to the football field at Northern Guilford High School, where their home team, Eastern Alamance, is playing.

Bailey films, her father takes pictures. They’ve been covering football together for 13 years. They aren’t paid, but they don’t mind. 

For them, the football field is home. 

The first time Bailey picked up a video camera, she was 15. 

She was nominated by her school for a program with WFMY-TV to film highlights of Eastern Alamance’s varsity football team, the Eagles.  

She thought she would only be filming home games. She soon realized she had accidentally signed away every Friday evening the fall of her sophomore year.  

Her first game was Aug. 21, 2009, at home against Cedar Ridge High School. She wore a black High School Hotshots shirt – the name of the television program – and carried a WFMY Canon camcorder and monopod. 

Her dad stood next to her on the sideline with a clipboard, writing down the plays she filmed. She wasn’t allowed to film games without a guardian, and he had the football knowledge. Alan played on Eastern’s team as a cornerback in the class of ‘78. 

The game ended, 42-0 Eagles. Bailey hurried home and struggled with her internet to upload her highlights. At 11:11 p.m., they aired on the Greensboro television broadcast.  

She had no idea the impact the program would have on her life, her career, her community.  

In Mebane, high school football runs deep.  

Bailey was dragged to the games when she was 3 years old, and she would color in the bleachers. As she got older, she learned to love the game.  

Alan, who is now the maintenance and operations manager at UNC Health Care, worked long hours when Bailey was growing up. She looked forward to Friday night football as their guaranteed time together every week. 

If she was sick, her mom, Marie Pennington, would call the team’s head coach, John Kirby. 

“Bailey stayed home from school today. Technically, can she still come shoot this game?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’d say, signaling that he couldn’t stop her if he didn’t know she had been sick. 

Kirby has been coaching for 38 years. He played on the team as a sophomore when Alan was a senior. 

What is it about the Eagles that makes people stick around? 

“The water,” Kirby chuckles. 

“It’s a family environment,” Bailey adds. “There’s parents and cousins and children and sometimes grandchildren involved.” 

The Eagles made it to the December state championships Bailey’s first two years filming with WFMY. She expected the team to do the same her senior year. 

“It’s not ending anytime soon, it’s not ending,” Bailey told herself before each game. Until it did. Eastern lost in the second round of playoffs, cutting her last season a month short. She cried, even though she had basketball and lacrosse to shoot in the spring. It was football that had her heart.  

In the spring, she accepted a spot at UNC-Chapel Hill, and turned in her camera and badge. It was time to move on.  

At UNC, Bailey joined a sorority and studied abroad in Paris over the summer. But as she entered her sophomore year as a journalism major, WFMY contacted her with the six words that were the way to her heart: “We could use some football help.” 

She adjusted her schedule so she didn’t have Friday classes. She would drive the hour from Chapel Hill to Greensboro, film one or two games in the area and return to campus at 2 a.m. Once again her Friday nights were sidelined for high school football.  

When she was close enough to home, Alan would join her. And when she filmed Eastern Alamance, she would always find herself back on the home sideline. 

Bailey worked with WFMY for another three years. After she graduated in 2017, she got a job reporting for her hometown newspaper, the Mebane Enterprise. One of her jobs was to cover high school football.  

Bailey wasn’t surprised. If her life was a pendulum, football would be at the center. 

She wanted to continue filming video highlights. But the paper needed pictures, and she couldn’t film and photograph at the same time. That’s when Alan went from being Bailey’s sideline “protector” to her sideline photographer. 

He picked up a Nikon D300, and learned to take pictures. He used to take a couple to send to the paper. That number rose as he realized players, parents and coaches wanted pictures, too. Now he takes about 800 pictures per game, and posts 100-120 of them to Facebook. 

When he has time, he covers softball, lacrosse, basketball and soccer. He has followed Eastern’s softball team to the state championships twice. Marie helps when she can. 

The community loves it. 

Parents tell him Saturday mornings after a football game are “just like Christmas morning.” 

They’ll call him, “Hey, I need that photo, how much do I owe you?”

“You don’t owe me nothing,” he tells them. “It’s all about giving back to the community.” 

Bailey left the Mebane Enterprise for a Greensboro marketing job in 2019. For the second time, she thought her years covering high school football were over.   

Then her boss suggested something that hadn’t crossed her mind – if she loved it so much, why stop?  

She called Coach Kirby. 

“Hey, I’m back, is that OK?”  

“You don’t even have to ask,” he said.  

She took on the title of “team videographer,” and created a Facebook page under the name "Pennington Photography" where she and Alan could post their photos and videos. When she moved to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services as a communications specialist in 2020, she didn’t even consider stopping football.  

Aside from the one football season Bailey’s freshman year of college, and her college roommate’s wedding one weekend last October, she hasn’t missed a game.  

“You must know how important you are to me,” she told her friend on the wedding day. Even then, her mom filmed the game she missed, and Bailey still edited a highlight reel.  

Bailey met her own husband, Dave Allison, on the field in 2009, when she was a sophomore and he was a senior varsity player.  

They didn’t hang out in high school, although Dave said Bailey did catch his eye on the sideline. Six years later, she swiped right on Tinder. They got married this past May.  

“I really like the month of September,” Dave told her when they were discussing a wedding date. “It’s my favorite time of the year.” 

“I do, too,” Bailey said. “But I’m not getting married during football.”  

The Penningtons are community staples now. Everywhere they go in Mebane, people recognize them. 

“Pennington catches all the great memories,” Taylor Byrd, a junior on the varsity softball team, said.  

Bailey has gone through high school, college, several jobs, and the one thing that has remained constant is football. Who knows how different her life would be if she hadn’t picked up a camera all those years ago?  

In Greensboro on this night, Eastern beats Northern Guilford in a close game, 41-35.  

As Alan drives back, Bailey edits her highlights from the passenger seat. Around 11:45 p.m., he pulls into her driveway. Bailey heads inside, her camera bag slung over her shoulder. 

She’ll upload her video in the next few minutes. He still has a few hours of editing ahead. 

They’re tired, but ready to do it all again next week.