Once upon a time, there was this little fellow who said, “I want to play football!” But his mom and dad weren’t quite sure the little fellow understood what he was getting in to, so they told him of all the bad things that could happen if he played, “Buddy, there are people who are going to hit you and knock you to the ground, and you are going to have to hit people back, and you are going to have to run more than you have ever run in your life”. “I want to play football”, was his reply.

                So we let our son, Cantrell, play football. Now you have to understand, Cantrell had never really done anything strenuous before, other than getting up and changing a video game cartridge, maybe. Well, he did play T-ball, but that is just not quite as … physical as football. So when he said he wanted to play, My wife Vicki and I were not exactly sure what to do. So we tried to scare him; it didn’t work. We laid it on the line, told him how tough it would be, how painful it would be, but he kept saying that he could handle it. So we relented, and walked him up to the school to where they were practicing, to let him speak to the coaches about joining.

                Apparently, children at that age just have to show up and not have any major medical maladies, have their parent’s consent, and they can play. So we stood around and watched as Cantrell went about the routines that were adhered to at that early stage of practice. At that point, no one had pads and helmets, so there was no hitting going on. Good for him – no, I take that back, bad actually, because it gave him an unrealistic impression of what football was going to be like. Ah well, he would find out soon enough.

                For about a week, practice went on like that, and then the day comes when the coaches tell us that we must get helmets, shoulder pads, mouthpieces and pants complete with pads, and oh yeah, cleats. This meant money. It was at that precise point that Vicki and I took Cantrell to the side and got down to the nitty gritty.

“Now son, are you sure you want to play football?” I asked.

“Yeah”, he all but screamed with enthusiasm.

“Now listen here, you are making a commitment. From this point on, there is no turning back. You can’t quit. No matter what. If you tell us you are going to play, then you are going to play all the way from now until November.”

“I want to play football”

               

                Of course I was covering my rear; if I went out and got Cantrell all the football stuff, and he turned around and the very first time he got hit turned to a gibbering mass of tears and screamed, “I wanna quit football”, I would be stuck with all that football equipment. That was not going to happen.

                So we go and get him all the necessary accoutrements to make his play safe for body and mind. He looked so manly with the shoulder pads and helmet and pads an all. One minute he is just this little boy, and the next he is this mean looking football machine. He was so cute you could just pinch him. Okay, enough of that, he was tough looking.

                And then it happens. No sooner had the gone into practice in his newly acquired suit of armor than he got nailed; nailed hard. I mean when he got hit, there was this little Cantrell-shaped cloud of fresh football uniform dust where he had just been standing, and there he was, 20 feet off to the side, a – you guessed it - gibbering mass of tears screaming, “I wanna quit football”.

                I think the fact that people would hit him and knock him to the ground somehow escaped him. It had escaped him up until then that is, and then it hit him all at once, and his mind says to him, “Dude, what were we thinking? Your dad lied to us, he said people were going to hit you and knock you to the ground. That wasn’t people, that was a Mack truck, fer crying out loud!!!” Of course logic dictates that if one perceives a threat to one’s survival, then it is incumbent upon one to beat a hasty retreat to some place where one feels safe, and under the circumstances, I think that anywhere, even a cave in Afghanistan would have seemed safer to Cantrell that the practice field. And he pretty much made that plain to everyone there.

                But he had made a commitment, and I had somehow missed this lesson in my youth, so by golly, I wasn’t going to let Cantrell miss it. So Vicki and I stood our ground, and made Cantrell stay. Now I know what some of you may be thinking; and that is that we are the kind of parents who would willingly submit their child to torment and anguish in order to save face. No, we leave the doling out of torment and anguish to the teachers. We were instilling a sense of responsibility in our son, thank you very much. Remember, we gave him ample chances to bail, and he took none. He was now committed to a task, and would see it though, come hell or high water.

                It would make me happy if I could tell you that that was it, that there was only that one instance, and everything changed. But no, it was a daily ordeal, Vicki and I would take Cantrell to practice, and watch in horror/dismay/humiliation as Cantrell would fall apart on the field. I mean the dude wasn’t prepared for what was going on, and at 8 years old, his coping skills were – well, he didn’t really have any coping skills. Nothing we did seemed to help. It was almost to the point to where we would have to relent. I mean come on, it isn’t fair to the team to have to stop what they’re doing every time Cantrell came unglued, so what else could we do?               

                And then it dawned on us. What if Cantrell was more upset at US seeing him not being the best kid on the field than he was upset at not being the best? What if we weren’t there, and that meant that there was no one to feel sorry for him? What if it were just him and the team and the coaches? Hey, they don’t let mommy follow you to Paris Island, do they? So we told the coaches what we were thinking, and they said to give it a try.

                It was a slow go at first, but every day he got a little better, and caused less and less problems. And then time came for the first game(s); the Jamboree. In front of other people. In public. What was going to happen? We had to go, we had to watch, and he was sure to know we were there. So what were we going to do? Well, we decided to play it by ear.

                Jamboree day arrived, and I took the dude to the Boy’s and Girl’s club early, and Vicki and her mom were to follow a bit later. I was nervous, I mean as much as I hated it, I really and truly hated it; it hurt me to know that Cantrell was having to deal with this traumatic experience and all, but as much as I hated it, I just knew that Cantrell was worse than I was. We got to the club, and the dude took off towards his team mates, and I went to the coaches to talk to them and thank them for all that they were doing for Cantrell.                

                Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cantrell standing in the middle of some his team mates, and he doubled over from a hit in the gut. I learned long ago not to make a big scene of things, and that if anything, Cantrell had a knack for theatrics, so I slowly walked over to assess what was going on. And there was the dude, doubled over in the grass. But something was wrong. Something was way wrong. I had seen him get hit. It seemed as though he had dared a boy to hit him, to prove that he was tough and could stand it; ala Harry Houdini, if you know what I mean. So I had seen the hit, and it was not a love tap. So why was Cantrell still? He should be shaking uncontrollably, tears flowing, babbling incoherently. But he was just doubled up, on his knees, face first in the grass, not moving. I was overcome with a sense of pride right then, because I knew what was going on. He knew darned well that he had asked for it, and that he was going to have to deal with it.

                The only problem is, part of dealing with it, in his eyes, was to come up for vengeance. I'm glad I was standing there. I saw the look in his eye, and immediately grabbed him the other fellow and let them know not to take it from there, and to shake hands. Oh, and for Cantrell to take what he was feeling and apply it with much force to the other team’s heads (which had helmets, remember?).          

                It was right there, right then, that I knew that everything was going to be all right. That our little boy was toughening up. That he should be able to deal with playing football in that day’s games without embarrassing himself in front of all those people (never one bit concerned about being humiliated myself, you know….) And he did it. He made it through the game without an incident. We were so proud of him that day. I wish I could say that he went through the rest of the season without incident, but no, he still had his ups and downs. Like the 10 year old with the 5 o’clock shadow that steamrolled him one game and stomped his hand malisciously, right there in front of God and everybody (except the ref, who was looking right at what happened, but for some reason, they never see those things. I guess if you throw a flag on a child that would do something like that, just think about what kind of parents that child might have. I understand completely what is going on there!) But there was one game where he got steamrolled and there was no “dancing on his head while he was down” cheapness, and he just lay there until the stars settled down, got up with limited assistance, and went to the sidelines, not a single tear.

                This was shortly after he came out of left field with a request to the coach that he be allowed to be the center. And the coach let him. And he did good enough to start. Well, if we were in a tight game against a tight opponent, the coach would use a more experienced player; one who would actually block. See, this being Cantrell’s first year and all, his blocking skills were lacking. We made a tackle dummy and worked with him on it, but that is one of those things that will, in his case, take some time. So anyway, his team, the North Rome Junior Pee Wee Colts made it through their season with a 4-1 record, which gave them a shot at the title. The week before the first playoff game, I started working on Cantrell’s concept of  “what should I do after I snap the ball”. I told him that there were two guys in front of him, one on the left, one on the right, and that these guys were going to try to get to the quarterback, and that what he should do is, when he gets ready to snap the ball, decide which one he would want to become familiar with, and when he snapped the ball, launch into one of them. And you know what? I felt bad about that for just one instant when Cantrell pancaked some poor kid. I sat petrified that he was going to stomp the kid’s hand, but he didn’t, fortunately he just turned went and started blocking other kids. Yeeee haaaaw, know what I mean?

                Now this is all offense, so far; except for the one time the kid stomped his hand; that game Cantrell was playing on the defensive line, if I remember correctly, the position he was playing that night was foot prop or something like that. Anyway, suffice it to say that Cantrell was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of having to line up on the line and go toe to toe with anyone. Well, in the next to the last game, and this is funny, the coach yelled for him to take his place on the defensive line, “Trell, (coach called him Trell) get out here”, the coach yelled. And you can see Cantrell on the bench, shaking his head no, nope, not me, not gonna do it, no. And his cheering section (a group of moms who had followed his progress all season long and were always congratulating me on how far he had come) was there, calling, “It’s okay BAYBEEEEE, you won’t get hurt…..”. Jeez Louise, right? But he went out and played one play on the line, and then went to linebacker, which is a position he liked for obvious reasons, but considering his lack of speed, was certainly something that was only going to get him his requisite 8 plays. And he did good, no problems, no tears. Yes, I am a proud parent of a North Rome Colt.

                And then there is the last game of the season. We had handled the East Central/Darlington Tigers in the first game, then squeaked past the Rome Wolves in the second one, and now it was one on one with the Garden Lakes Eagles for the championship. And to make matters worse, we were defending the title for the second year (defending it for the second year, which means if we won it would be the third year in a row). And the Eagles had just whomped the Warriors, the only team to have beaten us this year. On the up side of things, we had already beaten the Eagles in the regular season, so we had that to go on. Like it mattered. We walked all over the Eagles. Threepeat city. The trophy stays home!