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“So we’re doing this play, see, and I go out and I tell the kids that we’re going on three instead of one, see?” I assume he’s talking about the number that will cause the center on one of the football teams he coaches to snap the ball back to the quarterback and put everything in motion. But the number is important because if some kid rushes ahead on “one,” say, the whole team will be offsides and there will be a penalty. (This is the last technical explanation you’re going to get in this article because I’m an infield fly rule guy myself). While he’s telling this story, he’s grinning in anticipation, hands waving almost spilling his iced tea. “Well, these kids are like ten years old, right, and you can’t trust that they’re going to remember which way to run sometimes, let alone a change in the play. So I’m walking back to the sidelines praying that they’ll remember.” The grin widens. He’s into it now. “So I turn around and here’s the quarterback going from player to player on his team, grabbing their facemask, pulling them close and saying, ‘Remember, it’s on THREE.’” He pauses partly for effect, partly in pure satisfaction. “And I knew at that moment that that kid had just learned about leadership.”
The other two guys at the table, Steve Finnegan, President of the Fairfield Pop Warner League, and Jack Tetreau, Mike’s brother, who is the Athletic Director, nodded appreciatively. They had their own moments to share. Apparently, that’s the reason why they collectively spend coal-miner hours each week making sure that Fairfield has one of the best Pop Warner Leagues in the state, maybe in the country. And it’s the same reason that fathers and mothers all over town spend another zillion hours on coaching and practice and going to games. The mystery, though, is why eight- through 12-year-old boys and girls, who you can hardly get to empty the dishwasher on a good day, would make a similar commitment of time and a whole lot of effort to play football or to cheer for those who do. Shouldn’t they be out getting into trouble somewhere like when we were kids?
Actually, it was kids getting into trouble that started Pop Warner in the first place. It seems that the owner of a new factory in Northeast Philadelphia in
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Joe Tomlin asked Warner, along with a dozen other coaches, to speak to players in the league and he agreed. In a foreshadowing of the spirit the league still engenders, the evening—April 19, 1934—turned out to be filled with torrential rains mixed with sleet. Eight hundred kids showed up, but Pop Warner was the only speaker to appear. For over two hours, they listened as he talked and answered their questions. By the end of the evening, by popular acclaim, the fledgling youth program was renamed the Pop Warner Conference.
Today, the Pop Warner-Little Scholars League has eight regions in over 42 states with 145 leagues and more than 400,000 kids participating. The “Little Scholars” designation stems from the fact that if you want to play football or be a cheerleader in the league, you have to turn in your report card before you can start. If your grades aren’t up to snuff, you can’t play. More than one parent we talked to credited this single factor as the motivation for an amazing discovery of heretofore unknown academic ability on the part of their child.
Within the league, there are several divisions based on age and weight starting with flag football for five to seven year olds. Contact starts with Mitey-Mites, ages seven to nine weighing 45 to 90 pounds, and ends with Midgets for 13 to 14 year olds, who are at least 105 pounds. All the kids get appropriately-sized equipment that is the envy of some high schools and several colleges. “Our helmets are the same ones used in the NFL, just made to fit the kids,” Jack Tetreau explained. “The rest of the uniform and pads are first rate as well.”
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Michele Scholz was a little bit worried about the safety aspect when her son Stephen wanted to go out for PW football. “The thought of a first grader tackling and getting tackled just scared me to death. But once I saw the equipment and the training they give the kids, I was all right. I now believe it is really one of the safest sports out there.” She went on to be a Team Mom, which is a sort of cross between super organizer and an EMT (an Emergency Mom Technician when nothing but a mom will do on the sidelines for some brief bit of comfort).
“As a Board, we insist that coaches and parents sign our values statement. That way there’s no misunderstanding,” Mike Tetreau said. Having everyone with a common agreement about what’s important and how to behave can pay off in the heat of the game.”
“One time,” he recalled, “we were playing and there was a bad call with time running out. Now you have to understand that the parents and the coaches are all really close to the field so everyone could see it was a terrible call. So now the kids are starting to get upset and, more to the point, the parents were getting upset and yelling. Well, we had to get to the next play if we wanted to win. Besides we try to teach them that they have to overcome adversity and not every call can go your way. I couldn’t have the parents feeding the kids’ distraction about a play that was, after all, over with. So I simply turned to the seats where the parents were and said, ‘Hey, knock it off!’ And they did. Just like that. Later, some came to me to apologize for the way they acted.”
The whole enterprise is a serious commitment of time for adults. The seven football teams, each with 25 to 35 kids, each have six to eight coaches, with one a designated “head coach.” Beginning July 30, there is practice every night for two hours. After school starts, it’s three days a week, but then in September and October, there are eight games to play. Then if you win, you play playoff games, which can mean more games in regional playoffs, state playoffs, and if you’re successful, a national game. Add to that Homecoming Weekend, photograph sessions, a punt, pass, and kick competition, and Board meetings and coaches meetings, and, well, you get the idea.
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TJ Hardiman is eight years old and is an unlikely-looking football player. If you were his father, Tom Hardiman, who is also a coach with the league, you might be afraid that he could be carried away either by an opposing team member, who had eaten a large burger the night before, or a medium to strong breeze. But what he lacks in size he makes up for in enthusiasm and self-knowledge.
The boy from Roger Sherman was helping his dad one day on the sidelines when an errant ball rolled his way. He threw an impressive pass back to the referee who complimented TJ on his throwing ability. “Nice throw son, the ref said,” TJ recalled. “And right then I knew I was going to be a quarterback.” That’s a position, of course, that takes a lot more than just throwing a football. As the team leader, he has to have fifteen to twenty plays in his head, which, according to his father, he knows cold. This year he’ll be in the Mitey-Mite division with full uniforms and a chance to prove his leadership skills. He’s also excited about his dad being there as coach. Why? “Because after the game, we can talk about it and we can work on stuff together.”
TJ’s sister, Ellie, is also involved in Pop Warner, but as a cheerleader. Now if you’re still stuck back in Wally Cleaver land, you might think a cheerleader is, well, a cheer leader. And it’s true that they have to memorize an amazing number of cheers, the repetition of which at one point threatened to drive the Hardiman family to the madhouse. Now in her seventh year of cheerleading, though, she knows all of them without hesitation. But that’s not the point. The point is that cheerleading has developed into a highly skilled tumbling and acrobatic sport that would give the flying Wallendas pause
Ellie’s team actually made it to third place in the Regional finals one year and she’ll be out there again this year, mostly with the same seventh grade girls, who have come up through the program. Hers is the same grueling schedule, two hours Monday through Friday in August and two hours, three days a week right through to November. What does she like the most? “I like stunting,” she says, referring to impossible pyramids of girls held in place by “backspotters” and made dramatic by “flyers,” smaller girls, who hang off the structure like gargoyles. But the real rush comes during the competitions, where breath-baiting routines are a strict secret until unveiled before the judges. Ellie reports that the number one concern (and point awards) are for safety.
That’s because it turns out that if you want to keep your daughter safe, she’d do better going out for football than for cheerleading. A report in the January issue of Pediatrics revealed that hospitals over the past thirteen years saw more than 200,000 injuries tied to cheerleading, with almost 40 percent of those occurring to the legs, ankles, or feet. And while Ellie said that she’d only seen minor injuries, everyone is aware just how difficult and treacherous this innocent-sounding sport can be. Give me an O-U-C-H!
Both kids said they had met many friends through the program, though judging by the swarm of boys wanting TJ to come and play, friend shortages didn’t seem to be problem in the house.
Kalie Martin, 11, is also a cheerleader. “I started in fifth grade and went with one of my friends and really enjoyed it. I really like the competitions because everything pays off there. You get to meet a lot of people from other schools, too.”
For Stephen Scholz, who is 12, friends were also a factor. “I didn’t want to play hockey anymore,” he said. “My friends were all talking about Pop Warner and it sounded like so much fun. I went along and the coaches were really nice.”
“It’s pretty stress free,” he said. “Once I started playing the first couple of times, I really liked it. I thought if I kept going, my team could stay together.” For Stephen, about half the coaches have stayed the same though there are usually a few new kids every year. “The new kids—we help them and then just look after them.”
(This has got to be a change for the better from the old days when new kids were generally given the business until they wanted to leave town. Another difference from previous times is that all the kids on the team get to play in every game. This avoids situations like the one encountered by a not-very-athletic friend of mine named Eric when we were about nine, who almost never got to participate on his little league team. “They’re saving me for a big play,” he said to me one day, my heart almost breaking for him.)
The hardest part? “Oh, practicing every day, especially when it’s hot,” says Stephen. On the other hand, he mentioned “having fun” more often than most kids his age say, “like, you know.” He was enthusiastic about the annual banquet when awards are given out. But it is glory on the field that really got his attention. He recalls vividly one of his first plays, “when we scored our first touchdown. The ball was snapped and I was blocking and the quarterback ran right next to me. It was a great moment.”
Mike Tetreau was pretty clear about why the league works as well as it does. “Our coaches are passionate about teaching the kids skills and they do a great job. But everyone—from the Board members to the coaches to the parents—are clear that we want the kids to be safe and to have fun.”
“The kids learn lots. They learn accountability for their fellow teammates because if you mess up, everyone suffers. They learn commitment because they have to show up. They learn that not every play goes their way and they have to deal with that.”
Steve Finnegan emphasized that the league attracts youngsters of all different abilities. “I remember one kid who was not the greatest player and frankly, I wondered if he was enjoying himself at all. But the next year he was back because he liked being part of the team.” And if a kid just doesn’t like it? “We say it’s just too big a sacrifice if you don’t want to be here. If you tried it and don’t like it—hey that’s okay.”
But so many kids do like it that the roster is full for this year. “I remember one kid, a seven year old, looking up at an eight year old, who had graduated into actually having equipment…he looked up at him and said with a voice full of awe, ‘You’re Kyle and you play with the Mitey-Mites.’”
As with any organization, there has to be problems: the occasional hot-headed parent, a kid having a bad day, a coach stretched thin by work and the Pop Warner schedule.
But for all of that, there persists such a sense of joy—even an ebullience —about the program in everyone we talked to that it would have required a complicated conspiracy for the sheer goodness of this program not to be true. Veronica O’Connell, however, put it best in her letter to Steve Finnegan: “This child’s life has taken a 360º turn around. Thank you for all you have done for my boy.”