School is back in session, and with its arrival brings the return of sports teams gearing up for a new season. Kids of all ages are pulling on uniforms and heading out to the fields to work on techniques and strategies in the hopes of becoming the best team of all.
This summer, my 7-year-old nephew decided he’d try playing Pee Wee Football for a season. The idea of him playing seems relatively harmless. Being quite tall and stocky for his age, his physique certainly seems a natural fit for a football player already.
What I had no clue about was how seriously some people take the practices. It just seems sports, at least at his age, should still be in the realm of child’s play, seeing as how he is still just a kid.
The practice schedule alone is downright brutal for his age. They meet three nights a week for over two hours a night to learn the game. Add to that the time it takes to don the approximate thousand pads they’re required to wear, travel time to the field and clean-up and his weeknight schedule is all but consumed.
But this past week I couldn’t believe the tenacity of the coaches insisting on pushing the 7- and 8-year-olds to practice in debilitating heat, all because of an impending first game scheduled for this weekend.
A game that may very well get rained out, at that.
While most of us were finding new and creative ways to escape the brutal 90-degree weather (I personally was considering ways to move the window air conditioner around the house with me ”¦ maybe on a cart with wheels) and some schools in the state actually canceling school for the day the practices waged on with the kids wearing gear that will promise to keep them warm in frigid temperatures just a few months from now. Even as the thermometer skyrocketed toward the 100-degree mark they still executed the full two-hours of drills.
For Pee Wee Football???
I know the benefits of supporting our children in their pursuit of competitive sports. But I also think there is such a thing as pushing them too far, especially for their age. Yes, consistency and dedication are key to learning sports.
However kids are coming down with heat exhaustion just sitting in school, never mind out in the sun running, jumping, throwing the ball and tackling each other into a big sweaty heap-o-kids. Its also the first week of school, so many of them are already burnt out from their transition from summer laziness to days full of responsibilities.
Herein lies the debate that’s been tossed around for at least a few decades. Where do we draw the line between growing young boys into tough men and being excessively hard on them simply for their gender? There’s been a ton of research done that tries to dissuade parents from defining their kids simply by their gender; like pushing them to physical extremes to “toughen them up.”
When he first started announcing his decision to join the ranks, he was inundated with some of his adult relatives giving such sage advice as “never let them see you cry” and tales of how brutal the story-tellers coach was.
So apparently football is indeed a rite of passage in ways I, as a female, will never be able to identify with. And, having just one child (being quite female) I won’t have be learning through her either.
I did go check out a practice of his recently (when the weather was a tad kinder) and there he was, all geared up, sweaty, filthy and smiling ear-to-ear. Well, that’s certainly a great thing.
But at his age, I still feel like maybe, just maybe skipping a practice or two in light of keeping them all healthy shouldn’t be unheard of. They are, after all, still little boys and we, the adults, should know better. After all, we aren’t in the NFL here quite yet.
”“ Elizabeth Reilly can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.
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