YAFL and Beauty Pageants, are they the same?

Sunday, I had a privilege, rather an honor, to go and watch a YAFL (Young Americans Football League) football game. For those of you who are unaware of what that is, its real simple, football, at its youngest level. A great place for fundamentals to be taught and kids to learn things as discipline, hard work, and the basics of a great game.

Now, don’t think that I woke up on Sunday morning and say “I think I am going to go to a YAFL football game.” A family friends son was playing in the game. He just turned twelve and plays safety and running back. This also wasn’t some regular game, it was the “Super Bowl“, and for these kids, the biggest game in their life.

Most people would think, that you would go to a game like this and everyone would be friends. Much like little league. You know, where everyone is cheering on all the kids, there isn’t a division of teams from the parent section. The crowd, as a whole, is like a crowd watching a magician, cheering when he does good and what not. Well, this sadly wasn’t the case.

We arrived at Milne Stadium, one of the bigger high school stadiums in the Albuquerque area. While everyone was entering through the same side, the weren’t sitting on the same side. We had a home side and a visitors side. It wasn’t just a matter of where you sat either. This wasn’t a football game for 11 and twelve year olds, this was a football game for high schoolers that haven’t quite hit their growth spurt yet, and without the band.

There are cheerleaders on both sides, and these girls must have missed that growth spurt as well. None of them were taller then four feet but yet all of them knew the cheers. Then we have the signs and big posters. Now, you think, signs like “Go John!”, “Play Hard”, or “Give it your all!” Instead, I saw signs that read “Thrash those Bears!” or “Pluck the Eagles!” And on top of that, we had the PA telling us how we could tune into to some AM station to pick up the game live. Not even half the high schools in this state, yet alone this nation have their game over the radio.

On top of that, we have the parents. Now these parents are decked out, mainly the moms. They have face paint, jerseys that match their sons, and the above mentioned signs. To top it off, the only time they were ever quite was during half time. The rest of the time they were standing up and shouting these chants they had over and over and over again. A couple of the moms had mega phones, and the ones that didn’t, didn’t need one. “We are proud of you, yeah we are proud of you!” will be one the chants that will forever burned into my memory.

The best part of all this was at the end of the game. About the last five minutes the Home team scored, putting them up 22-6, and the rest of the game out of reach for the visiting team. To remind the team and the parents of what was happening, we had one of these lovely moms running around with a teddy bear that was hung to a pole.

This got me really thinking of all the reasons why YAFL football could be so bad. Everyone knows these little beauty pageants that go on for five or six year old girls. Well, here it is for a guy, the YAFL “Super Bowl!” Parents who force their kids into doing something they slightly like. Then, they make sure that they are good at it, no matter what it takes. If that means no dinner, so be it! School, who needs school when your son is going to be the next Barry Sanders?

What’s the difference? Okay, the girls dress up in nice skirts with make up, walk up and down a stage, and say how they want world peace, when they don’t even know the street they live on. The guys, they run around hitting each other, the form of true manliness to some, and play in a fake “Super Bowl” when they could just watch the real thing come January.

These parents have really taken this whole thing to another level. All I could think about was the kid across the field who put his whole heart into that game, to only lose, and then have to watch some mom run around with a hung bear. What does that do the kid? Personally, that would make me want to never play the game again. Now, add the angry dad who thinks his son did the worse job in the world and should have won the whole thing for his team. This could lead to very serious problems later on in the kids life.

We see these things going on and then we wonder as to why kids show up to high school with guns and why we have so much violence in the world. I really do see that little boy who lost talking to some therapist about it twenty years from now, as he is dressed in orange with handcuffs for killing all the workers at the local Build-a-Bear.

The only answer I could come up with to fix this whole thing is maturity. Parents should act mature about things. Take a step back and realize that these kids have feelings about things and sure, while we may be excited for them, or even disappointed, they are feeling about twenty times more excited about it then we are, they won the game for crying out loud.

Anyways, its about time I end this thing. Remind me later to write about the importance of coaching kids in their young years. God speed.