7.11.2003

Great Day For Football

“Great day for football. Great day to be alive,” says coach. It is 1982 and a group of eleven and twelve year old boys are running 30 yard wind sprints across an uneven, dusty patch of dry, brown grass in 105 degree heat. The air is dead. The wind is lifeless. The humidity mocks all living creatures. The heat has adopted a personality of it’s own. It insults them, taunts them. Coach adjusts his visor, takes a swig of water and spits. “We are just getting started ladies,” he says. The humidity squats down from the sky, smiles, and gives the boys the finger.

The ground is hot. The sky is hot. Every god-damn thing is hot. Small leaves ignite. Grass withers. Rocks silently weep. There are no bugs because the bugs are all dead. Children get burned from playground equipment broiled for hours in the sun. Trees and bushes slip into a coma like dormancy. Creek beds crack and crumble. Dogs refuse to move. Old people die. Cats implode. But the running continues, the practice continues. Some of the boys think they are going to die. One or two whisper dramatically to the boy next to them, “I think… I’m going… to die.”

Ill-fitting shoulder pads are their burden. Large blue helmets bob awkwardly on their sunburned pencil necks. Each helmet has a decal on the right side that reads “Buccaneers.” The “Bucs” are the St. Barnabas 5th and 6th grade football team. The squad lost all eight games last year – and was generally considered by all to be a total group of worthless losers. In this second week of summer practice, however, the new coach has decided these young men are going to be winners. In the spare seconds between sprints they fight for air as if drowning in sand. Most are doubled over with sharp pain in their abdomens. Their legs morph into aching rubber slabs coated in concrete. They run in dull-gray football pants, overstuffed with thigh, knee and butt pads. These pants reek of rotting sweat, dirt, blood and snot.

They are little boys struggling on a demon field. They are innocents. They still play “Kick the Can” after supper, they watch cartoons, climb trees, and ride dirt bikes. In a rational, loving world these boys would be at home eating Popsicles or leaping through the sprinkler on the front lawn. But they are far from the comforts of mother and home; they are on a god-forsaken chunk of miserable dirt running wind sprints – death sprints. Some feel that they are being tortured, but in the back of their minds they know they are not victims. They have volunteered themselves to be punished in the name of glory and honor and manhood. They have given up their bodies for pride and love and God and country. They are martyrs to the greatest team sport in the history of humankind. Football.

“This is how you become a champion,” says coach, “this is where it all begins.” He is the grade school football coach and he controls them and they are powerless. The boys hate him. They hate him because he is making them run. They hate him because he is fat, red-faced, and lazy. They hate him because he has a mustache and he smokes menthols on the sideline. He stands under a tree popping off shorts snaps of his whistle in a blue golf shirt and tight gray “coaches” shorts. The brand is “BIKE” and they are the same tight-ass, two-button polyester shorts that fat 42-year-old coaches have been wearing for centuries. They hate him because he is not running.

Around wind sprint number forty-two Dung begins crying. Dung is left offensive guard Chris Langford. He is a soft, chubby kid who picks his nose and doesn’t know how to comb his hair. Like most nicknames his handle evolved over a period of years; Langford – Lungford – Lungfish – Dungfish – Dung. Today Dung has been broken. Some boys have puked but they keep running. Everyone is spitting and grunting. Dung chooses to cry. The majority of the boys are too worn down to care. To them Dung is a pathetic baby in “Huggies” – a mama’s boy. He is running and crying. Running and sobbing. His arms and legs are dead meat. Some sympathetic boys challenge him to keep going. But most hope Dung’s breakdown will lead coach to stop practice out of pity. Dung stumbles to the chalk line used to mark the finish. He turns around and prepares for the next sprint. He moves as if he were being marched toward his own execution. He takes a sloppy three-point stance, waits for the coaches whistle and lunges forward in a whining froth of sweat, tears and fat. Bobby Lockhart starts to cry too. Dung collapses on the dirt. Another kid starts crying. Jesus help us.

“Come on girls” says coach. They analyze his tone for the slightest clue. Was that a “Come on girls,” as in “its over,” or a “Come on girls,” as in “we’ve got a long way to go?” They do one more sprint and stop - 60 sprints on the hottest day of the year. “The most ever,” coach tells them, “take a knee.” It’s over. The boys drink water, and more water; they drink brown water with grass floating in it. They drink water loaded with each others spit. They don’t care. Some realize for an instant, “this is how a team comes together.” Dung is smiling. He’s alive. They are all alive and faintly smiling. They are men. They are The Champions, and in the coming season they played hard. But they still lost every game.


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