On occasion, I have been known to reflect on my time as a Pop Warner Football Head Coach in Arizona.
With much love and appreciation for the opportunity to take a group of children, age eight and nine years old, and lead them through a tackle football season. Of that amount, about twenty-three were football players and the others were our cheerleading teammates.
I made it a point to always include the cheer squad as part of the “team.”
They were out there, just like the players, every practice, doing their routines and learning their own playbook. I made sure that, as they learned new cheers, the Team Leader would make sure every football player lined up, and sat, helmets off, as they listened to the cheer squad do their thing.
And they’d better clap.
My first season started a little rough, going 0-2 to teams which would not have stood a chance if they played us later in the season. That, and I made a couple bad coaching calls which I learned from.
We finally taste victory in our third game, and we were quite lucky and got a fumble recovery in the end zone as time ran out.
We had a great week of practice, and I was really looking forward to the boys pulling it together and playing well.
We stunk up the field.
I did not say a word, except “I will see you young men at practice on Monday.”
I was devastated.
I had made what I thought were all the right moves, and it wasn’t working.
At Monday’s practice, as the boys were going through their calisthenics, I told them that, sometime, during tonight’s practice, each and every player better come up to me and tell me one of two words. Nothing else. No apologies, no explanations.
Fight or Quit.
I honestly was getting so frustrated I didn’t care which. It would give those remaining a direction and I was ready to lead a group of motivated players into the rest of the ten game schedule.
Every player told me they wanted to fight.
I got a call from the league office inviting my team, made up of very poor neighborhood kids, to play at halftime of the Arizona Cardinals-Seattle Seahawks NFL game at Sun Devil Stadium. When I say poor, I had to personally buy about half the players cleats to wear so they could play in the game.
Long story short.
We were matched up against the bigger, faster, more well-equipped team from Scottsdale, at the polar end from my team.
My little ragtag squad from the other side of the tracks kicked the living shit out of those well-equipped young gentlemen from the other side of the tracks.
We ended up running out the season and stormed into the second round of the state playoffs.
Check out this shorty I wrote:
Halftime
The first half could not have gone any worse for the Spartans. They were on the receiving end of an all-out ass-whipping at the hands of the Tigers. The score was 35-0 but it could have been much worse. The players filed into the locker room and you could hear a pin drop when the coach followed them in and slammed the door behind him.
“You are the worst excuse for a football team I have ever seen! Don’t you have any pride? You are playing like a bunch of losers! Are you losers? By the looks of this first half, I would say absolutely yes. You are the most pathetic group of losers I have ever coached. You make me sick. No blocking, no tackling, and no energy. Why don’t you just fucking quit?
Bill, what a stupid play you made giving up that touchdown when you could have just wrapped their halfback up in the backfield. You’re slow, stupid, and a waste of skin! Pat, you call yourself a quarterback? My dog shits better quarterbacks than you! Henry, I hope you jack off better than you block, or you are in for a shitty life. Richard, I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire. You’re not worth my, or any of the other coaches’ time. Quit fucking around and run the football like we taught you. Gentlemen get your heads out of your asses, or I’ll kick your heads up so far, you’ll never be able to pull them out. Your play in the first half makes me want to puke.”
The coach looked at his starting linebacker Matt Johnson who also had a rough first half. Matt raised his hand.
“Don’t you fucking move Matt. You are a pussy. My own daughter can hit harder than you. You are a piece of shit. Now I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.
You are going to play hard in the second half and don’t even think about quitting! I will run you into the ground at practice on Monday and if you don’t show up, consider that your resignation from this football team. Now get your fucking lazy asses back out there.”
As the players sulked their way back to the slaughter, linebackers coach Ed Steen approached the head coach.
“Coach, pretty rough halftime speech. Think it might’ve been a little too much?”
“Not rough enough in my opinion, Coach. Why?”
“Well, because this is Pop Warner and they’re only eight years old.”
***
Stay well.
