Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9411160020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"You gonna do any hitting today?"
The military-style reply:
"YES SIR!"
"They're not tougher than you."
"YES SIR!" "YES SIR!" "YES SIR!"
The sounds and words echo familiar, like autumn rites of passage. But the scale is way off, the fundamental understanding of the game at hand is missing entirely, and the lectures from that same barking coach tell the whole story.
"Be quiet. No talking. Take a knee. STOP TALKING! OK, listen up. OK, listen up, listen up. Stop talking. Look up here. Look up here. Listen. TAKE A KNEE! OK, listen up. LISTEN ...''
Around him, his players fidget and squirm and bounce around like the 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds they are.
Bitty Leaguers.
"When you don't do well in the game, then you wonder why you're not doing well. There's only one reason why you're not doing well. It's because you're not listening. I shouldn't have to scream at you three or four times ... "
Between all the wiggling, they gaze at their lecturer with the unabsorbing expressions of kids who have gone through this drill too many times before - at home, at school, probably from nearly every adult they've ever known.
"All you got to do is pay attention. I can tell the guys making good grades in school. I bet their teachers tell them, 'No talking. Watch what we do on the board.' And the same guys who come out here and don't talk and don't play around, who pay attention, I bet they're making good grades. The ones who be playing around, clowning around, they don't make good grades ... "
His name is William Pannell, but they call him Coach Boo, and they seem to love him, except for maybe his pep talks, which they love to interrupt.
"I listen to my teacher," one little voice volunteers.
Others chime in. They listen to their teachers, too. They get good grades. One kid boasts that he won a coloring contest. Quickly, they all are talking about coloring contests, and talking all at once.
"OK. OK. OK. OK ... "
Inside their helmets, which teeter on some heads like oversized salad bowls, they quiet down again. They rest on their knees, covered by pads that sag from above the knee cap to below their ankles.
"Let me tell you all guys something. Being out here, learning to play football, is no different than going to school and trying to get good grades. There's no difference. I've told you guys once before. It don't matter how far you go, you're going to always have somebody telling you what to do. So, down here at this level, at this young age ... if you get used to that and gear yourself to being disciplined right now, it won't be as hard for you as you grow older in life."
He is interrupted again.
"You live beside me," a quiet voice interjects. In truth, they don't even live in the same neighborhood.
Pannell can't help but laugh.
"You don't live beside me," he chuckles.
Pannell, 44, coaches the Inner-City Falcons, one of three teams in this fall's Bitty Football League sponsored by Roanoke Parks and Recreation. There also are Bitty Leagues, or Pee Wee Leagues, in Roanoke County, Salem and elsewhere.
Critics might scoff at the notion of first-graders playing the violent sport of full-contact tackle football, saying first-graders are too young and too tender yet; babies, really, who can't tie their own shoes or fasten a chin strap or distinguish between the X's and the O's.
It is puzzling to Dr. Bob Rotella, director of sports psychology at the University of Virginia.
"I have no idea why they're playing football at that age," he said.
What concerns Rotella the most is keeping the experience fun for kids that age and not turning it into a miniature NFL. He said they should all get the chance to play every position, they should get to handle the ball the same amount and they should always leave practice or a game feeling better about themselves.
He said winning shouldn't matter.
And it doesn't.
In Bitty League, they don't keep score. Every game ends in a 0-0 tie.
What does matter, Pannell says, is giving kids an alternative to hanging out on the streets or watching the older kids hanging out. "It's something for them to do and a place for them to come," he said.
Beyond that, he hopes they learn the Lord's Prayer. Pannell and his Falcons begin and end every game and every practice by huddling together and reciting the Lord's Prayer. He also hopes they learn something about football, even if it is only how to do a three-point stand. And he wants them to grow a little tougher.
"Basically, what we try to do is relate life with football," he said. "Just getting out there and being able to take care of yourself, not letting someone just run over top of you. As they grow older in life, people are going to try to do the same thing to them anyway. So they're really just learning, at a young age, protection, just to keep people off of them, keep from getting hurt."
It is no easy task.
Lining them up for jumping jacks can take 10 minutes. Every time.
When it's game day, forget it.
Their parents are there. The cheerleaders are cheering. The clock is ticking; there are real referees and a real opposing team waiting at the line of scrimmage.
Whether the score is kept or not, it's all just too exciting, too much pressure, and there's too much to remember.
"Listen, you can't be looking over here now if you're playing linebacker, son."
Pannell is lecturing again minutes before the start of a game. "You've got to look back there in that hole."
The problem is, most of his players don't understand what a linebacker does. Or what a hole is. Some had to ask whether they were playing offense or defense.
Pannell sent 6-year-old Christopher Taylor to midfield for the coin toss.
"Call it in the air," the referee said.
The coin flipped into the air and dropped, uncalled, to the ground.
"Call what?" said Christopher.
On the second try, after a brief orientation, he called tails, and the Falcons won the toss.
"Listen. LISTEN! Listen to what I'm going to tell you." Pannell is talking before the team takes the field. "Pay attention. Give me them eyeballs up here. Everybody look up here. Remember how we get at practice and we hit hard? That's the same way we've got to do it out here ... hit those guys hard, all right?"
"YES SIR!"
Actually, the hitting at practice never exactly tips the Richter scale. In fact, there is probably less chance of injury in Bitty League than in older leagues, where the players have grown bigger, stronger, faster and more damaging.
Forty- and 50-pounders can build up only so much momentum.
Besides, these kids are too young yet to thirst for blood. In practice, they get more enthusiastic when they get to pee in the weeds next to their practice field at Addison Middle School than they do when they make a square hit between the numbers.
During a game, the same rule applies, only the pace is more frantic, the stakes higher.
Unlike in practice, there isn't the time for Pannell to lecture as much or to bend down and patiently offer the one-on-one instructions needed.
In the hurry of a game, he hands out his praise and dishes out criticism in equal measures, almost without punctuation in between.
"You're doing a lot of talking, but you're not doing any playing," he says. Then with a glance in another boy's direction, he says, "You did good, son. You saved us that time." And then, pointing to another boy, "When are you going to help him out?"
The one consolation in Bitty League is that the coaches get to stay out on the field with the teams to help line them up and guide them as the game goes on.
That doesn't always prevent shattered feelings, however.
Just before halftime, the quarterback, Brandon Joyce, 6, ran 20 yards, almost into the end zone for a touchdown, but fumbled - at the 1-yard-line.
He left the game in tears.
On the bench, Pannell's assistant coach, Cedrick Muse, dropped to one knee and quietly consoled the sobbing Brandon. "You're the head man," Muse told him. "You're the head man."
Brandon's mother, Jackie, said she tells her son that winning doesn't matter. What's important is giving your best effort. But she said Brandon wants to win. She said it was hard for her to watch him leave the game crying.
"I think if he could just get a touchdown."
At halftime, Pannell encouraged Brandon to keep his head up. "You don't worry about that. If you mess up, that's all right. What you don't want to do is get down and get mad at yourself. All right?"
"YES SIR!"
Later, with seven seconds left in the game, Brandon ran 50 yards and did score a touchdown, but it wasn't enough. Although the scoreboard showed a 0-0 tie, he knew, and most of the players knew, they lost. The players that didn't know asked. That's always their first question.
"Did we win?"
"No, we didn't," Pannell said. He begins lecturing again. "Sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose..."
"It doesn't matter. We're still proud of you anyway, OK? So I want you to give yourself a hand anyway. Come on, everybody. As long as you go out there on the field and you try your best, that's all we can ask of you, OK?"
"YES SIR!"
"That's all your parents can ask out of you. That's all we can ask of you as coaches. All right?
"YES SIR!"
He huddles them together for the Lord's Prayer.
"Nobody got hurt and that means a lot.
"Now, who's the best?"
"We are!"
"Say it like you mean it. Who's the best?"
"WE ARE!"
"And who are you?"
"INNER CITY FALCONS!"
"And what are you supposed to do when you come out here?"
"DO OUR BEST!"
by CNB