We Own This Game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football
208
We Own This Game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football
208eBook
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Overview
Although its participants are still in grade school, Pop Warner football is serious business in Miami, where local teams routinely advance to the national championships. Games draw thousands of fans; recruiters vie for nascent talent; drug dealers and rap stars bankroll teams; and the stakes are so high that games sometimes end in gunshots. In America’s poorest neighborhood, troubled parents dream of NFL stardom for children who long only for a week in Disney World at the Pop Warner Super Bowl.
In 2001, journalist Robert Andrew Powell spent a year following two teams through roller-coaster seasons. The Liberty City Warriors, former national champs, will suffer the team’s first-ever losing season. The Palmetto Raiders, undefeated for two straight years, will be rewarded for good play with limo rides and steak dinners. But their flamboyant coach (the “Darth Vader of Pop Warner coaches”) will face defeat in a down-to-the-wire playoff game.
We Own This Game is an inside-the-huddle look into a world of innocence and corruption, where every kickoff bares political, social, and racial implications; an unforgettable drama that shows us just what it is to win and to lose in America.
“Powell elevates We Own This Game well above the average sports book to a significant sociological study.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555847234 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
First Practice
A silver Honda with opaque windows rolls to a stop in a parking lot at Hadley Park. The car's trunk pops open as a small boy climbs out the passenger-side door. The boy pulls out a new pair of cleats from the trunk. Holding the footwear in his small hands, he breaks into a sprint. His legs carry him past a woman power-walking around a paved path, over to the playing field where the 95-pound Liberty City Warriors warm up.
Each weight division at Hadley Park occupies its own plot of practice field. The 110s stretch over by the game-day gridiron, which is never used for practice. The 145s run wind sprints near the tennis courts. The 95s own turf along the chain-link outfield fence of a baseball field. Coach Beasley, the offensive coordinator, has tied a yellow-and-black banner to the fence: "Believe it!!! Achieve it!!! 95 lb. Warriors."
Head coach Brian Johnson stands in the middle of the field, which is composed largely of dirt as fine and dry as cocoa powder. A black Nike floppy hat protects Brian's head from the 90-degree sun. Prescription sunglasses tint his eyes blue. Sweat trickles down his face, soaking his T-shirt and dotting one of the six pairs of Nike sneakers he owns. He's trying to look imposing, like a leader, but as he watches the boys run a lap around the park he starts to smile. He's been waiting for this day.
When Brian arrived at the field two hours ago, he brought props. Off-season runs to the Home Depot netted him yards of PVC pipe, elbow joints, glue, and a hacksaw, all of which he used to assemble an obstacle course of impressive complexity. Ten yards of rope netting wait to be skipped. A limbo bar hovering three feet above the grass needs to be ducked under. A dozen orange cones form a zigzag for the players to slalom through as if skiing.
During the day Brian delivers bolts, screws, and other machine parts to warehouses around Miami. Today he took the day off and loaded his work van with the obstacle course and the cones. Beasley cashed in a vacation day too. Coach Pete, who also skipped work, stands near a concrete light post, chilling in the narrow beam of shade the post provides. The brim of his black Liberty City baseball visor is pulled so low he has to crane his neck to make eye contact with the three other assistants as they roll in.
All the coaches, like all the players, are black. Coach Ed is a towering scarecrow with long, thin teeth stained by cigarettes. He'll oversee the offensive line. Lanky Coach Chico will assist Coach Pete, who is his girlfriend's father. Coach Tubbs has the cornerbacks. During the day Tubbs mows grass for the City of Miami Beach, his eyes blind to the tourists on Ocean Drive, his mower a monotonous whir as he daydreams about his evenings at Hadley Park.
"I just love football" Tubbs says after he slaps skin with Pete and Brian. "I was too short to play, you know, so I coach."
The first boys arrive back from their laps, breathing heavily. Sweat drips down smooth faces all frozen and serious.
"Run all the way in. Put your hands on your head. Run it all the way in. Everywhere we go we run," says Coach Ed. "Got to get in shape to play football. Ninety-five-pound football."
The boys stand in the line of shade from the light post, resting their hands atop their heads as they cool down. No one wears helmets or pads this first day. Instead they wear shorts and cleats or maybe tennis shoes as oversized as pontoon boats. Most have pulled their T-shirts up to their armpits to cool their lean stomachs. They are skinny, and tiny. The description "pencil neck" is more accurate than it is insulting. Brian's eleven-year-old daughter, Sha-nise, sprays water into the boys' open mouths.
"Boot camp" is what Brian calls the first week of practice. Every day for five straight days the routine is the same. After stretching in a lazy semicircle the boys run wind sprints, then crabs, which entail scurrying twenty yards backward on their hands and feet. At the PVC-pipe obstacle course they run through the netting, trying not to trip. Speed is deemphasized.
"Boy, once you get good at it then you can go fast. It's not about going fast. Take your time," Coach Chico counsels a player entangled in rope. "Run with your head up." The boys who trip run the drill again. There is no yelling. Some kids show superior form or surprising speed — "good hands and good hops," as Tubbs says.
"Head up," says Beasley to a boy watching his feet navigate the netting. "You've got to see that linebacker coming at you. Good job, little man."
After an hour of conditioning, the Warriors break into groups. Assistant coach Chico schools the linebackers on the proper three-point stance: feet behind the buttocks, chest parallel to the ground, right hand touching the turf for balance.
"You've got to get used to the cadence," Chico yells. He blows into a silver whistle. "Ready!" The linebackers drop into a squat. "Set!" They lean onto their fingers. "Hike!" Each boy explodes forward, running a few feet before stopping with awkward expressions. Do we stop here? Do we keep going? Coach Chico asks them to wrap their hands around his waist as if he were an oncoming ball carrier. He's not asking for tackles, or for the boys to use force. Still, Chico is six-foot-one and 205 pounds. The thought of tackling him — most of the boys can hope only to wrap themselves around one of his thighs — reduces them to giggles.
"Get mean!" barks Coach Pete in his Army drill instructor voice. "Wipe that smile off your face. Get ready to hurt somebody. Get mean! Come on, get mean!" Ten feet away, Coach Beasley introduces the offense to the different
positions in his complicated Georgia Southern system. Five boys form an offensive line. Antwane, the probable quarterback, stands behind them. When asked to stare at the butt cheeks of the players in front of him, Antwane turns toward a teammate and giggles.
"He said butt cheeks!"
* * *
In 1929, store owners in Philadelphia banded to solve a common problem: "Teenagers with nothing to do were causing them great losses in acts of violence," according to Pop Warner league history. The founder of the league, Joseph Tomlin, was an ambitious stockbrocker whose job prospects on Wall Street were crippled by the Great Depression.
Although the game took off in Pennsylvania, selling youth football to America proved a challenge. Parents feared their boys would be injured playing such a violent sport.
"Articles published by doctors, educators and others [stated] that the game should be outlawed," according to the official history. At a symposium on sports for youth, held in 1953 and attended by delegates from the AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others, Tomlin called for professional support of youth football teams. "His presentation is interrupted by boos. At the close of the conference, a vote is taken for a ban on 'kid football' and is supported 43–1. Tomlin being the lone dissenting vote."
Tomlin was not deterred. He continued brainstorming ways to promote his unwanted sport. One of his friends suggested what became the first-ever "Kiddie Bowl," played in a snowstorm in front of 2,000 spectators. A team backed by a Philadelphia restaurant faced off against a team from New York, Sinatra's Cyclones, sponsored by the singer. The game became an annual tradition. Within a decade, the league grew from a thousand teams nationwide to more than twice that number. Forty years later, the number of teams has tripled. Pop Warner is the largest football league in America.
For all its growth — especially in the last decade — Pop Warner remains a somewhat disorganized operation. There are no Pop Warner leagues in football-crazy Ohio, for instance. The national office takes great pains to point out Pop Warner's emphasis on scholastics, from the recognition of academic all-Americans to the awarding of college scholarships. Yet, for the 350,000 kids in Pop Warner, only $30,000 in scholarships are awarded annually.
Even in Miami, rival leagues vie for youth football talent. But Pop Warner is the only league that offers the possibility of playing for a national championship at Disney World. For that reason, Pop Warner is far and away Miami's dominant youth football league, home to the best players and the toughest competition.
* * *
There are a few moments in every football game when the crowd, the coaches, the cheerleaders ... well, the cheerleaders are often flying in their own universe, completely uninterested in the play on the field — but everyone else, from the stands on down to the water boys and even to the players on the field, sees the collision coming and draws in a collective breath to be released on the moment of impact.
"FOOM!" A short word said quickly, exploded. It's supposed to begin with the letter B, but in the slow-motion anticipation of the crash, in the trigonometry of a defender and a running back vectoring toward each other, some air escapes prematurely. Everyone says it the same. And just about everyone says it. If the hit is especially brutal a coda of cackles will be tacked on. "Ha-ha! Look at his sorry, flattened, ball-carrying ass. That dude be laid out for real."
For the 95-pound Warriors the first "FOOM!" of the year comes at the first practice in full pads. The four-year-old super pee wees receive their equipment first. No one younger than age six is technically allowed to play Pop Warner. Interest in football in Liberty City, though, is so strong that the Warriors field a team of boys as young as age three. The super pee wees play eight games of full-contact tackle football against other black parks. The little boys pull heavy helmets onto their heads, causing a few players to topple over. Hands poke out from the pads like feelers on a lobster. At their level, where shoulder pads make it impossible for receivers to close their arms together, pass plays generally do not work. Not that anyone minds.
"When they out here they can't do no wrong," says one father as he watches his son struggle to dress.
The 95-pound Warriors try on their helmets for fit, selecting facemask styles appropriate for the positions they will be playing.
"I play running back," says a chipmunk-cheeked boy named Brandon. "Give me the lumberjack helmet. I don't want a duck. I don't want to quack-quack. That's the kind of face mask where it goes way out here." He holds his hand six inches from his face and down below his collarbone. "A duck is the kind of face mask worn by linebackers."
It takes a while to adjust to the new pads. Diamond spits out his yellow mouthpiece during a lap around the practice field, earning him extra crabs when he returns to the light post. Others boys pull off their helmets for the run, another violation of policy, though one they were allowed just a weight class ago, at the 85s. After laps and crabs, the Warriors execute forty jumping jacks. Brian then asks everyone to lean to the right and touch their toes.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" snaps Brian. "Everybody know their right from their left, right? Right?" The Warriors drop to the dirt for leg lifts. Brian tells them to make some noise if it hurts. In response, when they lift their cleats off the ground, the boys pound their chests and warble Tarzan arias. First only Diamond, then also a defender named Stevie. Soon enough it's a movement that makes the practice field sound like the Amazon jungle.
"How do you feel?" barks Brian.
"Feel good!" the Warriors respond.
In truth, only a few boys feel good, for the first day in full uniform brings more than helmets and bulky padding. It brings a tradition some of the boys love, and most of the boys fear with such intensity they've cried through the wind sprints and jumping jacks. Full equipment means full contact.
"When the pads come on we like to say it's when the pit bulls become poodles," assistant coach Chico explains as he lines up the team for the Hamburger Drill. A crowd of more than fifty people gathers at the 95pound practice site. Six teenagers on bicycles lean over their handlebars, their eyes aglow. Parents of boys in other weight classes wander over in search of a violent tackle.
"Whenever somebody do something like the Hamburgerin' Drill they get, like, a lot of people around here who quit watching they own children and they all watch the drill," says Sha-nise, coach Brian's daughter. "They just want to see somebody get hurt. This is the thing that shows how hard they [the player] is, how soft or how big they heart is."
In the Hamburger Drill, two boys enter what is effectively a gladiator pit. Each lies on their back about seven yards apart. One boy has a ball. When Brian calls out "Go!" both boys flip over, leap up, and run straight into each other. The boy without the ball tries to tackle the runner. The runner does not try to avoid the would-be tackler; instead he tries to knock him over. Preferably, he'd like to knock him unconscious, which is what happens to a timid young tackler named Arlis on the initial round of the drill.
This is Arlis's first year in football, and his first time running the drill. He's asked to tackle Brandon, the running back who asked for a lumberjack face mask. But Arlis has never worn football equipment before, much less tried to tackle anybody. When he faces the experienced Brandon, Arlis stands up too straight, exposing his soft solar plexus.
"FOOM!" The crowd howls as Brandon spears Arlis in the gut. Arlis falls to the ground.
"That! Is! How! You! Run! The! Ball!" Coach Chico cackles. "Show 'em you ain't scared!"
"Stand up, brother," exhorts Ed, Arlis's coach on the offensive line. "You better learn to stay low. Otherwise they gonna bust you up in the stomach like that. You gonna get hurt." Two boys grab Arlis's arms and stand him unsteadily in the horseshoe of spectators. Over his shoulder pads he wears a baggy white T-shirt decorated with Warner Bros. cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, and Road Runner. Porky Pig announces, "That's all, folks!"
"Some of the boys, they can't wait to put on the pads. They want to hurt someone. They got anger," says Sha-nise. "Phillip, that running back over there, he's got anger. Brandon, he got anger. Some out here, they think they hard but when they get in there they get scared. They talk tough, then they afraid to hit."
Sha-nise turns her attention back to the horseshoe. Phillip, the running back with anger, flattens his would-be tackler to an approving "FOOM!"
"But most of the boys around here," she adds, "they pretty tough."
CHAPTER 2Liberty City
Judging by the brochures, Miami starts on South Beach. Art Deco masterpieces squat low and livable, a pastel fantasyland worthy of Disney. Condos outside the Deco district fight for sky space, each tower crowded with trust-funded club kids, Argentineans riding out economic collapse, and more than a few Americans starting their second act, burning bright and living way, way beyond their means. South Beach is nightclubs and movie shoots and New Yorkers broiling away a vacation on a beach of wide white sand.
The causeway points west. Past million-dollar yachts moored in the marina, past private isles colonized by Gloria Estefan, Rosie O'Donnell, and Cristina Saralegui, Cuban Miami's answer to Oprah Winfrey. Past Fisher Island, the wealthiest neighborhood in America, an enclave so exclusive (and paranoid) it's reachable only by ferry. Fisher Island is where Bill Clinton liked to stay when he was president, mingling among professional athletes and liquor barons and even, for a while, Oprah herself.
Downtown the skyscrapers ring Bayfront Park, a sweaty stretch of grass over which the fireworks explode every Independence Day. On New Year's Eve a sunglass-wearing tangerine climbs the façade of the Hotel InterContinental, marking the passage of time for fans from Norman, Oklahoma, or South Bend, Indiana, or whatever college town has relocated for the Orange Bowl football game. A drawbridge spans the mouth of the Miami River, where Tequesta Indians deterred Spanish explorers with a display of severed heads.
To the south gleams Brickell Avenue and its glass offices for lawyers and bankers profiting from foreign investment, much of it dirty. To keep going is to pass condos on Biscayne Bay, the shopping mall that is Coconut Grove, and eventually Coral Gables, with its stylish homes and Draconian zoning code. Hugging the shoreline, protected behind guard gates and high concrete walls, mansions flaunt wealth exponentially out of place in Miami proper, the poorest big city in America.
Drink in that poverty, north, in Little Havana. Cross Calle Ocho, clogged every March with more than a million people munching tasajo while listening to Elvis Crespo and Thalia perform on competing stages. Up seven blocks looms the Orange Bowl. On football Saturdays, University of Miami tailgaters stagger past vendors shouting, "Arepa! Arepa! Arepa!" to advertise snacks of mozzarella cheese melted between cornmeal pancakes. The rickety steel stadium sways with a crowd of sweating, dependably drunk fans, almost none of whom attended the expensive private school. These adopted Hurricanes collapse in ecstasy when archrival Florida State shanks a field goal to ensure another home win.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "We Own This Game"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Robert Andrew Powell.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface,
Prologue,
First Practice,
Liberty City,
Campos,
Diamond,
Suniland,
Goulds,
September 11,
McAdoo,
Liberty City at Palmetto,
Plex,
Election,
Pete,
The Game,
Homecoming,
Last Practice,
Playoffs,
Palmetto vs. Goulds,
Voting,
City Championship,
Orlando,
Awards Banquet,
Acknowledgments,