This is my son Jake at 10 YEARS OLD. I don't really see the difference in doing this to a little boy and dressing him up in a militia uniform and giving him a gun. Boys to Men.
Youth Football and I "Banged Heads"
I submitted this article to the New York Times Magazine and they were interested enough to ask me to make some revisions. They didn't publish it, so hopefully their loss is your gain:
BANGING HEADS
A mother’s conflict with youth football.
Time really does fly when you’re having fun and stands still when you’re not. Some weeks I cannot believe it is only Tuesday, the weekend seemingly beyond my reach. While Sundays, I swear the hands on the clock whirl ahead like something out of Alice in Wonderland, and the weekdays are upon us. And so it goes that football season was here again before I knew it. I take a deep breath in.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the invasion of college and professional football. I’ve grown quite accustomed to the ever-present sounds of a game in the background, accompanied by the smells and sounds of male-bonding. I even surprised my husband and sons (not to mention myself) with the NFL Sunday Ticket. I’m talking about the return of youth football, where I wait to exhale until my husband and son unanimously agree that he isn’t returning to the team, and the team knows it. If you are wondering why, the short answer is that it is simply too dangerous. The long answer is that it did not leave us better than it found us:
When it comes to kids and sports, I believe first that every parent should suffer the character-building experience of watching their child suck at a team sport while enthusiastically acting like it doesn’t matter. During our sons’ first year in baseball for example, my husband and I did our best to hide our knee jerk reaction of cringing for them when they struck out or froze, and instead yelled things like “nice try, you’ll get ‘em next time”. I believe secondly that all Mothers deserve to have that cute little picture in the uniform. If it wasn’t for teaching them the proverbial “you have to finish what you start”, once I had that picture, I was ready to call it quits.
After failing at baseball and succeeding at basketball, Jake was ten years old when he joined his first travelling football team in 2010. The decision was the first in our twenty-five years of marriage which affected the family that was made without any input from me. Even though we agreed that neither he nor his twin brother would play this kind of contact sports until their growth plates were formed, all was lost from the moment the coaches saw a fifth grader with his size and physique. They had my son at “hey Jake, we want you on our team . . .” they had my husband at “Wow, what a big, strong . . . son you have. . .” You could say I was steamrolled by the offense, and I capitulated.
To be fair, I was raised with all women; not an athlete among us. Conversely, my husband was a college track star, remains a good athlete and raised three other grown sons who not only survived youth and college team sports, but excelled. So on top of being outnumbered, I was literally out of my league. But Steve and his grown sons played in another place and time. We know things now we didn’t know then. When we know better, aren’t we supposed to do better?
Most of the team had played together for several years, but it’s a small town and the boys all knew one another, so our son fit right in with his friends. Some of the coaches and parents however wanted us to take our position at the bottom in that way that clearly defines pecking order. While we have lived here over twenty years and our sons were born here, certain arenas make us feel like outsiders. So while I love the South for so many things, politics, religion and football are not among them.
Practices and games began in the long hot days of summer where the heat index often toppled 100 degrees, and continued into the short winter days and freezing nights. Here in the heart of Dixie, the Southeast Conference, it took an Act of God, (and even then, only the lightning one), to stop a practice or a game. The schedule was four nights a week with games every Saturday. Family dinners were too often replaced with late night fast food. Where calmness and order once prevailed, chaos ensued. The practices resembled boot camp. There were three serious injuries before the first game. Borderline dehydration problems caused little boys to vomit in their helmets, while wobbling to the sidelines was most likely an indication of mild concussions. But no one dared complain – MAN UP – this is FOOTBALL. While our son was in the best physical condition of his young life and did look great in that uniform, his confidence turned to cockiness and he became predictably more aggressive. If there was an early-detection system for a BULLY, my husband and I agreed, the alarms would be sounding.
As is true in most things, the experience wasn’t all bad or all good, and doesn’t apply to all players and their families. One size does NOT fit all, and probably doesn’t fit ANYONE. If you let your son play and I don’t, doesn’t make one of us a better Mother. But just because we don’t talk about something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. There is a reason misery loves company and there is strength in numbers.
Once the decision was made to allow him to play, our attitude was positive, and our support unconditional. While this was the year more information was released about injuries in this sport than ever before, no one was talking about it. Months later, we attended a reunion of my husband’s Undefeated Tufts Track Team with his old friend Brooks Johnson, who continues to train Olympic athletes. Brooks gave us this insight: Football in the South, he said, is not a sport, it is a religion. “You subjected a 10-year old boy to the rigors of training meant for grown men – shame on you”. He asked if we thought it affected Jake’s brain and we reminded him at this age, who could tell? By the time we watched Troy Aikman telling Bryant Gumbel that he might not even let his son play the game because of the risk; we thought our son’s interest was fading.
They won every game, and eventually a championship the group had been chasing for many years. I use the word group instead of team intentionally. Although every generation thinks this, this was not your parent’s youth sports. When we grew up and my husband was raising his first set, parents were not as singularly interested in their child and collectively worked as a village. Today there is such a sense there is not enough attention or slots to go around as parents push their child to the head of the line or the top of the heap, ignoring or stepping on other children along the way. We say this will be an exercise in team and sportsmanship, but politics take priority over skill and winning takes all. And the kids know it.
The night after the final game, in the safety of the darkness while I rubbed his back, my little boy who still lived inside the emerging body of a man told me how he really felt. He felt like a fraud while chest-bumping and holding the big gold trophy for pictures on that final night. He admitted ducking behind the head of another player for the team picture in the newspaper. Even though they won, he was defeated. In the final game, like several other games for which they apologized for as an oversight, he hadn’t been given one second of play. He held up his end every single practice and game; they did not hold up theirs. He was trying to figure out what he had done wrong and this is what I told him:
Honey, this was supposed to be a game you played with your friends, while teaching you to be more skilled and how to be a team – like basketball does. And while I know it’s confusing when you put those big old feet into a man’s 10 ½ wide shoes, you are still an elementary school BOY. You are learning what Daddy says you shouldn’t have been exposed to for many years, but here it is. The first thing you need to understand is that they wanted you on their team because you are big and strong, PERIOD. They wanted to train you to take that big strong body and HEAD and inflict as much damage on another child’s body and head, even if that child is significantly smaller, or it does permanent damage to you both. AND THEY WANT YOU TO DO THIS FOR THEIR ENTERTAINMENT. What they didn’t know about you is what we always tell you we are proudest of – that you may have the biggest body; but you have the heart and mind to match. So, football is not your ticket to college, nor likely to be your chosen profession. You don’t need football to attend college or be successful in a career. Lastly, other than your head coach who Mommy really does like and respect, the men who run these things have been sending gladiators into the stadium, soldiers into battle and boys into contact sports for centuries. Some are looking for the next Tim Tebow. Some are living out their own unrealized dreams through their sons. Your Dad was on the front page of the Boston newspapers winning his races and your half-brother was a star short-stop for the University of Southern California. We just wanted you to have fun.
Football season isn’t over yet and in the same way women can have more than one child because it is our nature to forget pain, Jake has asked ten times if he can play next year. The team has not asked why he didn’t return, but some of the Mothers have. My husband tells him football is benched for now, let’s play all the other sports, wait on his growth plates and hopefully the NFL/NCAA/AMA will have a response to the concussion problem. But I remember that night in the dark, when after he was asleep, I cried the tears he couldn’t. I tell my husband that if fathers are in charge of what happens to their bodies; Mothers are in charge of what happens to their hearts. For now, he can add it to the list of the stuff I did wrong that he tells his therapist someday. Later, I may be overruled again, but if you ask me right now, my son will play football again over my dead body. Other than that, I have no strong opinion on the subject. Big Breath Out.
Anna Marie Kirkpatrick-Wilkey is working on her first novel, “Add it to the List” (for your therapist), her story of having twins at 50
Anna holds a magna cum laude degree in communications from Loyola Marymount University and resides in Gulf Breeze, FL with her husband and 12-year old twin sons.
The 6-pack circa 1960s
My Best Friend Mary and Me, part of the Airline Friends who are seated above, Cristina, Katrina and Patty* (with Elaine and Tania from the Spot)
Sue (and Lou, wherever you are), Debi, Lisa and Betty -- below = Jeanne, Andy, Kell-Belle and Lisa. Robert Redford was once quoted as saying he didn't want any new friends -- I get that -- the older I get the more complicated my history, I didn't look for new women friends in my 60's -- but when my niece moved to town, we forged a friendship for life, and somehow with all the casual relationships that are mine, I found my newest friendships in the village that is Andy and Lisa. 
