Originally published 1/9/18
Football is the soundtrack of my fall, as it is any good Southern girl's. I don't know much about it; I mean, I know there's a quarterback, and a kicker, an offense and a defense, and that the team with the most points wins, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Because I went to USC in the 80s, that also means I don't care who's playing. I generally pick my favorite team based on whose quarterback is the most handsome.
Why are quarterbacks to cute?
Then I married Michael Cannon, who, you may remember, loves any event that involves the throwing of a ball to another person. Next to going to church, going to or watching a sporting event is his favorite thing. We found this video that Olivia made when she was in third grade: she was walking around her house, then her grandma's house introducing her viewers to the people in her life. When she got to her dad, who was watching football and who may have actually been holding a Bible (I can't quite remember) she said,
"And that's my dad. He's always either reading the Bible or watching sports."
We laughed when we came across that video because, well, it's true.
Michael's favorite football team is the Miami Hurricanes. Ironically, Michael went to a school (Washington & Lee) whose football team is not in a big enough league to be seen on cable television. Since Michael grew up in Miami, and went to the University of Miami for a year, he adopted the Miami Hurricanes. He was there for the legendary 1980-whatever championship game. He follows scouting reports, recruiting news, arrest records, and injury updates with rabid intensity, both in-season and out.
Well, I thought he was rabid until I met Sam Goodpaster, University of Kentucky fan. Keep in mind, Sam is 9 years old, but he can tell you about the UK 2007 game in which somebody threw a ball to someone who did something spectacular with it. Sam wasn't even alive then and he can give you all the details.
Sam moved to Sewanee in late July, with his family. His dad, David, is a junior (first year) seminarian. Sam moved here from, you guessed it, Lexington, Kentucky, where his mom worked at Mecca - the University of Kentucky. Sam and his brother Max, 7, are serious about their Wildcats. Almost every shirt they wear has some sort of UK logo on it. They wear UK helmets to watch the games on TV, which, I think, they watch standing up because they're so excited. They draw UK logos on every available piece of paper.
Even though Michael is a Miami fan, he still knows many facts and statistics about every other ball team as well, so as soon as Michael recognized the boys' rabid love for UK football, they bonded.
The boys got even more excited when they learned that the seminary hosts a weekly cookout in the fall, and that there is a field on which to play .... football. Michael and I encouraged them to attend the cookout, as it provides a great opportunity for families to get to know one another. The Goodpasters were new, and had just suffered the tragedy of the death of their youngest son, Zac, who died just a few days after they moved to Sewanee. We had been afraid that they would move back to Lexington, so we were trying all of our best tricks to get them to stay - which began with the promise of a live football game with Michael on Friday nights.
The demographic of the seminary changes every year, as different sizes of families move in and out. We had just graduated a class that had 37 children between about 20 seminarians. To put that in perspective, our class has 10 kids, and the middlers has 8. So to graduate 37 kids is like losing a seminary village. So we were glad when the Goodpasters came with their boys to build our little town back up.
We also got some other new kids, some really little ones, in our community. So the Friday cookouts were a great way for all of the kids to get to know one another.
It's also a way for the adults to get to know the kids, which I always favor. Kids are usually much more interesting than adults. No offense to any adults reading this.
Sam and Max arrived at the Friday night cookout, screaming in on their bikes, and a football was immediately rounded up. They had not forgotten the promise of a ball game. They looked around at the recruits and were immediately flummoxed. The average age of the boys is 5, though there are three 9-year-old girls. That had to do, because Sam and Max will find a way to play ball. After several futile attempts by their mother to get them to eat dinner, they were finally ready to pick their teams and start the game.
Now, Sam and Max think that every other kid has the same knowledge of football that they do. They think every kid knows you can't throw a forward lateral pass past the line of scrimmage, that a player cannot cross the line of scrimmage before the snap, that there are four plays in a possession, that holding is illegal, and that the end zone is that way. They are shocked to learn these boys and girls don't know those things.
Sam, left, getting his team together.
I, also, don't know those things, and wasn't prepared for the actual game of football these boys wanted to play. I thought we would toss the ball around gently and pretend to score. Nope. These boys wanted a serious game of football. So, assuming all of the five-year-olds knew the complex rules of football, Sam and Max got the game started.
We even started each play with a huddle. Right then it became clear that no one but Sam, Max and Michael knew how to play football. Sam called his team for a huddle, and the three young boys came in for a hug. You can see it happen in the video:
Sam, in hilarious exasperation says, "Not a hug!"
Michael and Max, right, conferring with their team.
In their seriousness, the boys fussed at the younger players and chided them for their mistakes. Marshall Simpson, 5, got the hang very quickly of getting the ball, but he didn't understand - nor appreciate - even the tag tackle and its implication that he was down and did not, in fact, score a touchdown. Which sent Marshall into a full-on, crocodile tears breakdown. Sam was dumbfounded. There's no crying in sports. He continued to get frustrated.
As this was my first experience with Marshall, I looked up at his mom and dad when he started to bawl. Across the field, dad talked with new neighbors and mom just looked at him and sighed. OK, I thought, this must be modus operandi for Marshall. Mom and dad are not rushing over here to make sure he's ok. And, by the time I made that calculation, Marshall had wrapped up crying and was moving on the next play. He wanted the ball again. He was getting the hang of it and wanted to run with it again.
But when he didn't get the ball, he dissolved again into full-on, crocodile tears. Sam coached him sternly again (as a coach does to football players, doesn't every kid know that?), confused about why he was crying while playing football. Sam and Max both tried to explain to a devastated Marshall about why he didn't get the ball, and why he can't just be the only one to run with it. All the kids began to get increasingly frustrated with how the game was going.
Sam's dad, David, saw what was happening, and called for a family huddle. He explained to Sam and Max that not everyone knows how to play football, and that these kids are really young, and maybe they need more explanation about how to play the game and how to be part of a team. (He may have said other dad things, but that's what I overheard.)
Oh. That's all Sam and Max needed, was a little coaching of their own. Magically, before my eyes, they turned into coaches and cheerleaders and mentors. Without losing their excitement for the game, Sam and Max explained plays in the huddle, and guided their young players around the field. Marshall continued to dissolve into momentary tears occasionally, when we all came to understand that was his 5-year-old way of expressing frustration. Even then, they taught Marshall how to believe in himself by pulling up his arms in a bodybuilder's pose, and teaching him to flex his muscles and roar with manly strength. Sam and Max then began to bend the rules to the game to let Marshall get a touchdown or to let the girls to run the length of the field, but never to let Michael score without a full-on tackle. They began to play with, dare I say it, a Dabo Swinney kind of love.
In the photo at left, Max, right, coaching Marshall, on the left. Wren, in front, is 4, and was wielding a sword. They couldn't quite bend the rules for that.
"...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things." Galatians 5:22-23 As we've gotten to know Sam and Max, we have learned that they are excitable, energetic, smart and loving boys. They are a handful, and they wear their mom ragged some days, but as we played football that day, and as I watched the evolution of their game in those few minutes before dusk, I witnessed the fruit of the spirit in them. They evolved quickly from demanding, assuming boys, to understanding coaches. That's coaching that many adults - myself included - could use most days.
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