THE PRE-GAME PRAYER VS. THE LAW.

• Author: VILBIG, PETER

THE NEWEST BATTLEGROUND IN THE SCHOOL-PRAYER DEBATE IS THE FOOTBALL FIELD, WHERE A HOST OF SCHOOLS ARE DEFYING THE SUPREME COURT

It's homecoming night at Batesburg-Leesville High School, and the girls in the homecoming court, wearing long purple dresses and dazzling yellow corsages, flutter nervously through the jammed stadium. In Batesburg-Leesville, a hamlet of 9,000 in the pine barrens of western South Carolina, there's no movie theater or bowling alley. The game is it. Up in the press box, sophomore Alicia Koon, 15, nervously twists a piece of paper in her hand. The drill team gathers on the field in a circle holding hands, a color guard bears the flag to the 50-yard line, and the crowd falls silent. Alicia leans toward the microphone and reads:

"Heavenly father, we thank you for this night that we may come to this athletic contest. Guide all of our players throughout this game. Help them to maintain fair play and show good sportsmanship. Be with us as we return to our homes this evening, and help us all to be in good spirits, no matter the outcome of tonight. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen."

The crowd roars, the band strikes up, the moment passes. Yet in that short statement, Alicia and her listeners have played their part in a defiant movement rippling through high schools in many parts of the southern United States this fall. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized prayer at public-school football games violates the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. The ruling struck hard at a cherished tradition of prayer before football games, particularly in the Bible Belt--the swath of mainly Southern and Midwestern states where fundamentalist religious beliefs prevail. Although most school districts have abided by the ruling, others in states like the Carolinas, Alabama, Ohio, Arkansas, and Texas have fought to continue the custom, creating a new front in a decades-long war between school-prayer advocates and those who think prayer should be a private matter.

The battle pits two clauses of a single constitutional amendment against a third. The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of speech and religion, which protect the right of Americans to worship as they please, but also requires the separation of church and state, which protects the rights of religious minorities to be free from pressure to conform to the beliefs of the majority. It is a battle in which students are on the front lines.

"We never had anyone come up and say, look, I'm offended by this," says Emzi Watkins, 17, a Batesburg-Leesville senior, who, like many students, opposes the Court ruling. "I'm not for just my right as a Christian. It's for anybody's right, anybody's kind of religion there is."

But her best friend, Matt Williams, 17, a senior, is one of a handful of students who have openly spoken out against the policy. "I think it's a violation of rights of everybody else who believes differently," he says. "Of course, in this town it's a...