“It’s ridiculous,” said another father. “It’s part of this sissy-fication. I had at least five concussions myself and I played through all of ’em. You got high drop-out rates, kids on drugs, headed to jail, violence, poverty—these ain’t the problems. It’s concussions? Get real. For some kids this the one chance they got. This the activity that keeps ’em outta trouble, gives ’em father figures. You gon’ take it away? Mischief is the easiest thing to find.”
“All that concussion stuff is not from these little guys,” a third father said.
“You can’t handle this right here, how you gon’ handle life?” said the first father. “You think the hits hard out here? Wait till you see the hits life’ll give you. This right here’s where you build that mental toughness. That shit is key. Mental toughness.”
The Pop Warner organization depended on this belief that the benefits of football outweighed the risks—so much so that league officials seemed to deny the reality of the risks. In June, in the midst of a heated national conversation about football’s impact on the brain, Pop Warner hosted a panel discussion about health and football, titled “Eat Smart, Play Safe.” Yet concussions were not a focus of the presentation, rather a single health issue among a wide array of topics. A poster board with a diagram of a brain declared how football promoted cognitive development: alertness, focus, mental engagement. When the discussion, after more than half an hour, finally turned to concussions, a neurologist on the panel, Dr. Majid Fotuhi, explained that people underestimate the brain’s resilience. The long-term damage from concussions, he told the audience, sets in only if an athlete does not address it, “like a car that is damaged and you do not fix it.” He claimed that sufficient sleep, regular exercise, omega-3 DHA supplements, and a healthy diet will cause the brain to grow and can work to balance out the potential long-term damage a kid suffers from a concussion. “If somebody has a concussion, it’s not over,” he said. “The brain is malleable, the brain is fixable, especially if you’re young.” He did not back this up with any specific evidence.
THE PEE WEES lined up for the year’s first set of hitting drills. A few parents pulled up their phones to record video.
“This is what it’s all about,” said one boy’s auntie. “Once you hear those sounds…” She smiled wide and wagged her head in satisfaction. “I love this.”
Two Pee Wees stepped to the center of the tackling stage. They were new to the team this year and neither had worn football pads before today. Both boys were big for their age, but their helmets and shoulder pads, which seemed to swallow them up, made them look much younger now. The boy with the football held it loosely between his palm and his forearm. The boy on defense stood straight up, awkwardly, with barely a bend in his knees and his arms down at his sides.
“Come on! Look like football players!” Esau shouted, and the boy on offense tucked the ball into his chest and the boy on defense crouched a bit lower.
“Set! Go!”
The boys jogged toward each other but a second before the collision they both slowed, nearly reaching a full stop by the time their bodies met. The boy on offense turned to the side and ducked his shoulder and the boy on defense lunged sideways and wrapped his outstretched arms around the ballcarrier’s shoulders, like a toddler catching a beach ball.
“What, y’all don’t wanna hit?” Esau said. “You ain’t ready for no hitting. You been playing basketball all summer. You ain’t ready for no contact.”
The next two participants brought much of the same. They slowed before the collision, as if mutually agreeing to lessen the impact.
“That’s soft!” Oomz said. “Why you scared?”
Donnie was next on defense. He eyed the ballcarrier and chewed his mouthpiece. Within a month, he’d chew his mouthpiece so flat that he’d need a new one. He was, his teammates all agreed, the most aggressive boy on the Pee Wees. All summer, he’d picked fights with teammates for the smallest reasons: for stepping on his toe and not apologizing, for accidentally elbowing him in the stomach during practice, for laughing too hard when somebody made a joke about how short or slow he was. Usually Oomz or Isaiah had to step in and pull Donnie away, and Esau would yell at him to calm down. But today, the first day of pads, brought an outlet for that anger. And now his teammates, hopping on their toes and rubbing their hands together, were excited to see what Donnie could do with a free pass to hit somebody as hard as he could. The ballcarrier, a skinny 11-year-old, nervously tossed the ball from one hand to the other.
“A’ight, let’s go Donnie!” Esau said.
He crouched low and ran hard at the ballcarrier, who veered to the right side of the stage. Just before contact, the ballcarrier slowed down and ducked his head and turned his shoulders, bracing for the hit—but it never came. Donnie had run so hard that he overshot the mark, running right past the front of the ballcarrier, hitting the boy with only his left arm before losing his balance and tumbling to the ground.
“Awwww, come on Donnie!” Esau said with a chuckle.
Donnie slapped the ground with his hand and shouted, “Fuck!”
“It’s a’ight, Donnie,” Esau said, still laughing. “I know you ain’t scared to hit, but you gotta control your body. Can’t just be running around with ya head down. You wanna hit ’em but they tryna not get hit. Ain’t just about who the maddest. Gotta getcha feet squared.”
“A’ight,” Esau went on. “Who’s next? Ummm… Oomz. Isaiah.”
“Ooooo-weeee!” Andrell shouted.
IT’S NATURAL FOR a boy to slow down and brace himself right before crashing into another body. The instinct is to avoid the collision, to limit the impact, to protect the body and prevent any possible pain. This mind-set, as Oomz put it, was soft, and one purpose of Hell Week was to drive it out and install new hard wiring. The veterans on the Pee Wee squad, the 11- and 12-year-olds with four or more years in pads, had shed their discomfort for contact through hundreds of hits, and on the tackling stage they embraced the violence. The veterans aimed to maximize the impact. They accelerated into the collision. They reveled in the sound of their hits. Their excitement for contact drowned out the fear. Some boys, like Oomz and Hart, claimed that they’d liked the violence from the start, that something in them had been drawn to the roughness of the collisions, that the hitting had always felt comfortable. “A lot of ’em get that first hit and, man, they can’t get enough of it.” Coach Vick said. “Once you get that bell rung, it’s like a light goes on. And once that light goes on you’ll never be able to turn it off again.” Other boys, like Isaiah, admitted that they’d been scared at first; that they’d once shied from contact, and then gotten used to it, and then eventually learned to enjoy it. For the parents watching from the fence, it was clear that there were two types of boys on a football team: those who were hitters—a complimentary term perhaps second only to football player—and those who were not.
The Pee Wees didn’t know if Marquis was a hitter. Esau called him to the stage and put him on defense. Oomz was the ballcarrier.
“Set, go!”
Oomz ran straight ahead and made no jukes. He crouched low, so his chest nearly brushed his knees, and got even lower a step before the impact. Oomz was the hardest boy on the team to tackle. He ran hard and aimed to punish those who tried to tackle him. He was short and thick, and with the way he ran low to the ground, it was like trying to tackle a tree stump. Marquis ran straight at Oomz, kept his hips square with Oomz’s hips, and didn’t shy from the collision. He crouched nearly as low as Oomz, then ducked even lower and punched his shoulder pads and helmet into Oomz’s chest with a pop! He kept his legs pumping even as the boys seemed to stalemate, then with his arms wrapped around Oomz’s waist, he dipped him to the ground.
“Yeah! Yeah! There you go, Marquis!” his father Ramsey hollered.
His teammates cheered and his coaches clapped. “I didn’t know if Marquis could hit,” Isaiah said later. “But it looks like he could hit.”
The hits became harder
and louder as the week went on, and the Pee Wees grew closer and more excited for the start of the season. They practiced every day that week, and each day confirmed the boys’ belief that there was much talent on this team. A sense of urgency gripped them. It seemed to radiate out from Isaiah and Hart and reach every boy. Some days, they reminisced on the losses of the previous season, and they vowed that this season would be different. Almost nobody missed practice. Many arrived early. Their eyes stayed locked on Esau as he described the new plays he’d created. Few goofed around during practice, and those who did faced Oomz’s anger. They ran laps and pushed through punishing 100-yard sprints without complaint. By the middle of the week, it became clear that the boys believed this was an important season. Some of them, like Isaiah, Oomz, and Hart, thought about it morning to night every day that week. They fantasized about the great plays they would make. They imagined the wins and the celebrations. It consumed them like a romance. It remained on their minds as they stripped off their pads, traveled home, showered, ate dinner, and sprawled on the couch as their mother or father watched television, which was filled with images of fires, tanks, shields, guns, and scores of angry people barely older than they were, bandanas over their mouths, running from billowing tear gas in Ferguson. Their parents watched the images with strained faces, understanding, praying things would change this time, perhaps wondering if the cost of progress was always blood.
ON THURSDAY, THE second-to-last day of Hell Week, the sun dipped below the horizon of brick towers during practice for the first time all summer. Mr. Hart, Marquis’s father Ramsey, and Dorian’s father Dwight stood side by side at the fence watching their boys run and hit. They were all big men and they all worked in law enforcement. Dwight, with his chiseled arms and chest beneath his gray V-neck, was a Port Authority police officer in New Jersey. Ramsey––who, with his offensive lineman build, bald head, and beard, looked like Rick Ross––drove a bus on Rikers Island. Mr. Hart, short and round and solid as a boulder, had been a correctional officer at Rikers for 27 years. He’d been a dutiful guard who rarely missed work, until the knee injuries that sidelined him in March. He had been on his back at home for months, but he returned to Betsy Head in time for the summer practices.
The coaches and parents gave him a hero’s welcome. His booming voice had been missed, Coach Chris said. Among Mo Better parents, Mr. Hart and his wife were the center of gravity. They’d attended nearly every practice since their son had joined the team four years earlier. For the anxious fathers who complained about the coaches’ decisions and worried about another losing season, Mr. Hart was the voice of reason, calm, and optimism. He brought energy to the park, and his energy caught on among other parents.
“Andrew! Andrew!” Mr. Hart shouted at his son. “You gotta extend the arms and drive him back! Gotta block him! Gotta get the ball to your quarterback before you can block! Yeahhh! Yeahhh Andrew!!”
“Hell Week, baby! Hell Week! Let’s get it!” Ramsey added.
“Good block, son!” Dwight yelled. “Good run, Isaiah!”
Dwight had nearly pulled his son from the team after last season. Why commute an hour for each practice only to lose so many games? There were plenty of teams closer to his home in New Jersey. But Chris had persuaded him to stay. It was an off year, Chris had told him, and we plan on fixing it. Dwight decided to give Mo Better one more chance, but “this will be Dorian’s last year here unless they do something special,” he’d said in the spring. Now Dwight believed that they really might do something special.
“They shouldn’t lose a game this year,” he said to the other fathers. “The talent is there. It’s just a matter of putting it together and executing.”
“I come all the way from Queens to come out here,” Mr. Hart said. “They got the talent. The coaches just gotta get it together. We are stronger. We are stronger. We ain’t giving nothing up.”
“Y’all know I’m coming from Queens, too,” Ramsey said. “Coming all the way out here for this ’cause I heard this is the place to be. What happened last year?”
“They should’ve gone undefeated last year, but they fell apart at the end of games,” Dwight said. “Brick City, East Orange, and Montclair—they kept it close through two, three quarters, then got tight or something and the other guys pulled away.”
The Brick City game, Dwight and Mr. Hart recalled, was particularly painful. It was a brutal contest, and the teams looked evenly matched.
“It was six to nothing for most of the game,” Dwight said. “But they lost confidence in the end. It’s up to the coaches to keep them together and organized at the end. Sometimes they got a bit disorganized. They lost thirty-something to nothing.”
The fathers went quiet and watched the action on the field. The park was buzzing. Latino men played softball in one corner. West Indian men played soccer on a patch of grass in another corner. Five kids on bikes rolled up and down the dirt mounds at the edge of the grass. Three boys played baseball with an aluminum bat and a mini basketball. A group of girls practiced cheerleading moves. Several people jogged around the track. Dozens played handball, cricket, or basketball on the caged-in blacktops.
“One more play!” Coach Chris shouted at the Pee Wees. It was past 8 p.m. and the sun had nearly set.
“It’s already getting dark! What’s the difference? Ain’t this hell week?” Ramsey shouted.
“I just got here!” Mr. Hart shouted. “I just got here! 10 more plays!”
“Sun’s still out!” said Ramsey. “Come on, coach, nobody goin’ home!”
“C’mon, coach! S’posed to be Hell Week!” Mr. Hart said. Isaiah took a handoff and Dorian met him in the hole and they collided with a loud pop! “Now we hear some rattling!”
THE BOYS GATHERED around Coach Chris before the last practice of Hell Week, a Friday. It had been a good week, and all were hopeful about the team’s prospects. The day was overcast and light rain was in the forecast.
“What a great day for football,” Chris told the boys. “When it rains this field is perfect. It kills the dust.”
Their first preseason game was on Sunday, and the Pop Warner season was a few weeks away.
“Start thinking big,” Chris said. He’d given versions of this speech before. It was one of his favorites. “You don’t have to get a job; get a business, own something. Start thinking big. You don’t have to get an apartment; buy a building. Start thinking big. You don’t have to get an eighty; get a ninety. Start thinking big. Start thinking big.”
Chris had high expectations for the season. So high that he’d already begun thinking and speaking about the team’s game against Brick City, whom he considered Mo Better’s main rival. Brick City had risen to the top of their league in recent years. “They came out of nowhere,” Esau said. “Back when I played, I never heard of them. They just came up. Back in my day, we didn’t lose in the regular season.” Brick City dominated the league now the way Mo Better had for two decades. Last season, nearly all five of their teams had won regional championships and made it to Florida for the Pop Warner Super Bowl. It was an organized program. The players marched off their bus single file, quiet and disciplined, with their blue bags. They were fast, strong, and hungry, and they reminded some of what Mo Better used to be. That angered Chris—used to be.
“The division that we’re in, the black and blue division, they have no respect for us!” Chris said to the boys. “They don’t fear us no more! They’re already giving it to East Orange and Brick City! They lost respect for us. Only way we gon’ get respect, we gotta take something from them. We gotta take their heart. Knock them out!”
The Junior Pee Wees’ 35–0 loss to Brick City last season still bothered Chris. His boys had gotten the ball within 10 yards of the end zone four times and Brick City had stopped them from scoring on all four. With each stop, the boys lost spirit, and by the fourth quarter they seemed to have given up. Brick City specialized in a running game that spread the field, unlike Mo Better’s old-school, inside s
mashmouth style. They ran to the outside and, in the fourth quarter, they overpowered and sprinted past Mo Better’s tired defenders. Though the team had fought hard and kept it close for much of the game, the finish had been an embarrassment.
All week, Chris had already been preparing the Pee Wees for Brick City’s attack, showing defenders how to line up to contain the outside runs. When he caught a boy joking around and not paying attention, he shouted, “See if you smilin’ when we playin’ Brick City!” before making the team run a lap.
“I’m sick of these dudes,” Chris continued. “They lost respect for us. It’s bothering me. It’s a matter of being real physical and nasty about our business. They not gon’ believe it until we shut them down. Everybody gotta be nasty and on the edge. We all gotta be like razors, all of us. Nobody getting around us this year. When they get wide on us, I want you to knock they asses into they fathers’ laps. That’s the attitude we gotta have.”
Chris stomped around the circle as he spoke, going up to each boy and looking him in the eye. His arms flapped up and down to accentuate his sentences. His voice was fiery and his cadence found a rhythmic groove.
“All our national championships and all that good stuff, that don’t mean nothing now. I want some new stuff. I’m tired of talking about the past. I want some new stuff.”
IF THIS WAS the year Mo Better returned to Florida, Chris believed, it would be because they had a weapon no team could stop. Halfway into practice, he and Esau watched Isaiah take a pitch and speed around the corner, graceful as a cheetah.
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