On a cool December Friday night at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, the coach is hiding beneath some palm fronds with his laptop, jotting numbers on a legal pad, crossing off numbers, adding more numbers. Everyone has learned to ignore him when he gets like this. Dads in Bermuda shorts shout beer stories, moms in bright flip-flops snap photos of the boys, 12 and 13, who have found the hot tub. The pool, swarming with toddlers bopping Styrofoam noodles, glows supernaturally.
"You know what? I’m heading back to the room," he tells Kerry, his wife.
"Jim—" she says.
"I’m sorry," he says.
It’s getting loud. The Wi-Fi is crappy. He needs to focus. He packs up his stuff, DVDs, notebooks, cables, both PC laptop and MacBook so as to avoid any formatting issues when he’s studying film. At this level, film is key. Pre-game prep can go on for days. Two o’clock in the morning he’ll be up, walking the treadmill, watching film. He’s 47, thick jet-black hair, fit, high-energy, fast-moving, fast-talking, deep-set eyes dark and serious. By day he’s an airline-software salesman, a full-on tech geek, but everything else about him is Pee Wee.
Well, technically, Junior Midget now. In Pop Warner football, kids move up. From Tiny-Mite at age 5 to Mitey-Mite, Junior Pee Wee, Pee Wee, Junior Midget, and finally Midget, aging out at 16.
Jim Udinski has been coaching in the league for the past fourteen years, and his Division II team, the Lenape Valley Indians from suburban Philadelphia, has already made history—twice. Last year, when the boys were still Pee Wees, they crushed everybody, every game, everywhere, earning the regional championship and the coveted trip to Disney, where, every December, elite teams from across the country come to the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and compete in the Pop Warner Super Bowl.
Undefeated—and then throw a trip to Disney World on top of it? A Pee Wee couldn’t soar much higher than that, and neither could a Pee Wee parent or a Pee Wee coach. Youth sports involve a collective emotion unmatched at higher levels of play. The caring is personal. The love is not virtual or sublimated. Winning is communion, winning is sacrifice and pain, winning is a kind of birth.
Losing? Honestly, they had forgotten what it felt like to lose. The burn. Like you just swallowed acid. Like you just got shot through the chest. No exaggeration can suffice. They lost in the first round at Disney last year and went home.
It’s tough to say who felt it worse, the kids or the coach. That is a tough, tough call. Udinski is not a man of tears. People call him Rain Man. People call him a wizard. Studying tactics, his insatiable hunger. Like, for his birthday, the one day he can do whatever he wants. It’s in November, and he’ll pick a day to celebrate, a Sunday, when there’s a Junior Midget game at 9 a.m. in one town, 2 p.m. in another, 7 p.m. in another. He can drive and make all three. Five hundred miles in one day he’ll go, alone, studying Junior Midget games.
Like all other Pop Warner coaches, he gets paid exactly nothing. Reece, his son, is the quarterback. He has another son who plays high school ball, and his oldest is off at college now, quarterbacking a Division III team. That’s about as far as any of these kids will ever go; the really good Junior Midgets, like Reece, Cole, Gresko, Kendrick, they might be able to make a team at a small college. There is never talk of pro ball. Agents. Money. Sponsors. None of that. That’s maybe Pop Warner Division I—teams that come from bigger towns and cities with more teams—not II. For these kids, football fame is not in the cards and not the point.
"There is nothing at stake," Udinski is the first to say. "I’m not going to get fired as the coach. And the kids are not going to have their agent call me and say, ’He’s going to go to another organization.’
"All that stuff—it’s not the point."
It’s the paradox of football, and probably most youth sports. Take away all the ways football is supposed to matter and football seems to matter more.
The Lenape Valley Indians don’t refer to themselves as "Indians." They are, simply, "LV." In 2012, Udinski took the team through another perfect season. Another! LV is now 29-1 over the past two years, and returning here to Disney is Redemption 101.
"So now on defense they have 29, 3, 35, 22, 28, 45, 81, 7, 80," he’s mumbling, alone in the hotel room, jotting down numbers. "And that kid right there. Let’s see, 13." He’s leaning in, squinting at the screen, hitting rewind, play, rewind, watching footage of tomorrow’s opponent, the Redondo Beach, California, Junior Midget Sea Hawks. He bought the tape online for $200. At this level you do what you have to do. "So that’s...ten. I’m missing one kid." He’s writing numbers, crossing off numbers. The room is tight, worn, a Holiday Inn–and-Formica vibe. The numbers tell him that Redondo Beach has substitution issues, serious and tantalizing. "And 45’s right here. I think this is him. One of these two. Come on, dumb tape. Yeah, that’s 45." He studies his paper, crosses off numbers. "So they have four two-way players." He writes _four, _circles the word.
He folds his arms over his head, leans back, stares at the paper, the glow of the laptop flickering.
"Mathematically, that’s going to kill them."
Reece, the quarterback, looks nothing like his father. He has his mother’s fair complexion, his mother’s slight build, his mother’s round, easy eyes. Sometimes, when Udinski gets stuck untangling a defensive tactic or reading an offensive pattern, he’ll call his oldest, Ward, for advice, while Reece looks on like a baby giraffe, all legs and arms and longing.
It’s an image that applies to many on the LV Junior Midget team. Bony and unfinished, uncertain and willing, the boys step off the bus at the ESPN sports complex, gather into a lump in the parking lot, wait silently for instructions. They do not have iPod wires hanging out of their ears. They do not snap pictures or text friends_._They do not even wear their snazzy blue-and-gold Lenape Valley jerseys—not yet. In these ways the team stands markedly apart from others coming off buses, kids here to play in other brackets, other weight-class divisions—one team after another rolling out like parading explosions of color and sound, shimmer and fight songs, clicking and clacking cleats and waving arms expressing the obvious: Holy crap, can you believe this place!?!??
The ESPN complex is a 255-acre playland, as beautiful and perfect as the Magic Kingdom itself down the road—except it’s sports! Palm trees, a cloudless sky, no mud, fields so green they glow, cheerleaders in itty-bitty skirts and giant Mickey Mouse bows scampering toward the pavilion housing the cheer competition—Pop Warner for girls. A jumbo screen flashes images of awesome hits, awesome catches, set to heavy metal, bang, bam, bam, bam.
Reece, Cole, Gresko, Kendrick, all the guys soldier through the happy chaos, do not hoot, do not holler, stop and stand obediently against a cement wall.
"A funny group," says Todd Nelsen, Udinski’s first assistant coach, a kind of lieutenant. "The most serious bunch of kids. Cerebral. We tell them, Relax. Have fun! But—" Todd started coaching with Udinski when he had a son on the team; the three other LV coaches have sons here. Todd’s kid aged out, but Todd...couldn’t.
"Sit down, boys," Todd says, and so the boys slide against the cement wall and put their butts on the pavement outside the building where they will weigh in, per Pop Warner rules. To qualify as a Junior Midget, you have to be between 10 and 12 years old and weigh under 145 pounds, or 13 and weigh under 120. A 13-year-old in that situation—over half the LV kids—is known as an "older/lighter," a term that translates roughly to mean: awesome football machine. He’s all muscle, because he eats maybe nothing but lean protein for a year; he’s smarter, faster, barely squeaking by with his weight, topping out a system designed to keep everyone safe. The Pop Warner league has always been big on respecting the laws of physics, of weight and velocity—keeping the sizes even to reduce the risk of injury.
Udinski’s team is small—just twenty in all. A few of his kids are two-way players, like Reece, who plays safety on defense in addition to quarterback. Not a lot of extra kids to rotate in. Streamlined and efficient—that’s the Udinski model. At practice, he’s anti-scrimmage. Waste of time. Scrimmaging means a guy’s out of ideas for what to do with all those bored adolescent boys, and so he hunts down another team and lets them have at it. Definitely not the Udinski way.
"Practice perfect and you’ll play perfect. That’s his whole thing," says Philip Braccio, another coach. His son Cole is the star running back and linebacker. "Our practices are very, very regimented. A master plan. We’ll go through forty, fifty offensive plays, _bang bang bang bang bang bang bang. _And we’ll call them out, and they’re perfect. Down, set, go, fire. Down, set, go go, fire. Every day. Running those plays every single day. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until the kids become robotic."
It helps explain why they look so serious compared with other teams rockin’ the ESPN sports complex. They’re rehearsing plays in their head, kids committed to a coach whose idea of warfare is drone-strike precision.
"The chance to play for Coach Udinski" is a phrase that kids and parents alike use often. "It’s a privilege. It means you’re elite."
"He has more of an impact on disciplining my son than I do," says Coach Braccio. "They fear him—in a good way. They respect him so much because he expects so much out of them. And they expect so much out of him. It’s a unique relationship."
At weigh-in, kids have to wear their team jerseys; that is the Pop Warner rule. Udinski gives a gentle nod when it’s time, and the boys stand from their seated position against the wall. They open their bags, remove sleek blue-and-gold jerseys, put them on. To reveal your team identity before this point would be a reckless indulgence. Why give the opposing team a chance to look you over? One by one, each kid steps on the scale, says "Thank you" while a lady at a desk verifies his GPA. To play for Pop Warner, you can’t be flunking—an irrelevant rule for LV. These are honor-roll kids. Their coach will find out if a kid is not doing his homework. He will find out if a kid is eating junk food. He will find out if he didn’t go to bed on time. He will find out.
You’re watching ESPN3!_ "Hello, everybody! Right now we’ve got Lenape Valley taking on Redondo Beach and really, Dave, a total contrast in styles."_
_"Yeah, you look at both of these teams, you have Lenape Valley out of Pennsylvania, think the Pittsburgh Steelers, think the Philadelphia Eagles. Think about physical football. Then you have Redondo Beach, run the pistol, a little bit of spread offensive ball in there, too. It’s East Coast versus West Coast. This game, it’s gonna be won in the trenches." _
It’s crazy to be here, on field 17, a featured game; only the featured games are televised live on ESPN3. It’s crazy to think how this whole Junior Midget season wasn’t supposed to even happen_._ Last year, when they were Pee Wees, that was supposed to be the end. Because Pee Wees in the Lenape Valley region don’t tend to stay in the league for another year, choosing instead to go off and play for their middle-school teams. But the boys made a pact to come back after losing in the first round last year.
"So there we have John Jackson, the head coach of Redondo Beach; he’s a former USC Trojan. Also spent some time with the Arizona Cardinals."
_"On the other side, Jim Udinski, head coach of Lenape Valley. There he is...." _
"Sharp-looking uniforms, aren’t they, Dave?"
What happened last year, it came from the Pee Wees themselves. They got together after the loss at Disney, went over to Coach Udinski’s house, and said, "Please." They said, "We are not finished. One more year. We’ll show you." Udinski was not sure. He had taken the Pee Wee defeat hard. He was exhausted. The will of the boys, that’s how this miraculous season came to be. They’ll need three wins here at Disney to claim the title.
_"Third down and eight. And now, the play- action. Udinski. Under pressure. Trying to get out of the pocket. Heaves it downfield. And-what-a-catch! Oh, my goodness! At the forty-four-yard line. It was John McSweeney on the grab. And that was the best catch, I think, _of the entire day."
"Eight yards to go on second down. Udinksy looking over the top. Has a man open! And it’s caught! And a touchdown for the Indians."
There will be nothing after Junior Midgets, after these games at Disney. The boys will not become Midgets. They will, finally, disband, head off to their various high schools. And Udinski will stay home. Todd, Philip, and the other coaches will stay home.
"Fourth down and twelve. Dave, what do you think we’re going to see here?"
"I think they’ve got to try to throw the ball. See if they can find any bubble screens. They have to get one of their speed players out in space."
"Udinski steps up. And tosses toward the end zone. For the touchdown! And it’s Lenape Valley with a two-touchdown lead."
"A void," says Philip, who feels the end coming as hard as anyone. "A major void in my life." Before his son Cole, he and Udinski coached Philip’s older son, Dean—who’s now graduating from high school. So no more LV after Cole. "I get depressed," Philip says. "I’ll have to show you on my phone, I’m not kidding. I record the practice, secretly. Recording it just to capture, just for me. Like in four months I can look at it and go, ’Oh, that was practice.’ Shit like that."
"Jim Udinski will trot onto the field. Wants to make sure his guys are dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s right there."
Udinski is a religious man, devoutly Catholic since the beginning, a million brothers and sisters. His parents demanded accountability. When you grow up like that, you don’t even realize it, but it makes you so conscientious people look at you funny. You emerge an adult, come out into the real world, and you’re like, Wait, doesn’t everybody do what they say they’re going to do?
_"Second down and fifteen. Keep an eye on the clock. Thirty-seven seconds. Three wide receivers. Udinski sitting there waiting for it!" _
Interception LV!
_"Smartly just kneels in the end zone. Boy, big play for the defense of Lenape Valley to come up with a turnover with just seconds left in this first half." _
"It’s the speed of Ivy combined with the savviness of Udinski and the hard running of Cole Braccio. Put it all together and it is an unstoppable attack now for Lenape Valley."
"Lenape Valley racking up the points. Nineteen-nothing here at the Pop Warner Super Bowl here on ESPN3."
_"There’s Jim Udinski. His team just looks unfazed. Maybe one of the reasons you’re not coaching anymore, Dave? You gotta play against a guy like Jim Udinski?" _
"Heh heh."
"You look at Lenape Valley, it’s a team that, well, they’re not going to scare you getting off the bus. But every athlete out there knows his role. Dave, anybody from your playing days used to drive you crazy like that, with how well they played their assignments?"
"We used to drive people crazy that way! You know. That’s why we won two Super Bowls and we were 13 and 3 the year before. Dominating the AFC West and the Kansas City Chiefs—"
_ "Let’s send it to the studio now for an update!" _
"I believe every man in America watches the Super Bowl every year," says Udinski. It’s his philosophy. Football is in a guy’s DNA. A primal thing. You should play it so you can talk about the glory days when you get older and drink Bud with the guys from the office. Get it done when you’re young, while you have the chance.
"When guys watch the Super Bowl with their friends, every one of them will reflect for ten seconds or a minute or an hour about his experience in football. ’I remember when we played,’ or ’I remember in middle school I played quarterback one game.’
"They don’t remember if they were in a lesser division because they were not very fast, not very big. All they know is they had a helmet on, shoulder pads, and they were playing football.
"It’s the American-male culture. It’s an identity."
Of course, it’s an identity that’s become somewhat soiled right now by the NFL concussion debate. In the pro world, concussive and subconcussive hits have been linked to dementia, to damaged brains of retired players quietly and not so quietly going crazy and, like Junior Seau, killing themselves. In autopsy, the disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), shows up, a kind of sludge in the brain that can rob a person of his sanity. Could it happen in youth sports, too? Should we panic? Your kid could get brain damage! Stop youth football now!
As if football didn’t matter.
A quarter-million kids play Pop Warner football; the league responded to the concussion conversation in 2012 by adding more regulations. Most of the impact a kid endures in football happens in practice—time on the field during a game is, after all, just forty minutes a week. So limit the exposure to risk by limiting practice time: Just two hours of direct contact a week is what Pop Warner now permits.
Beyond regulation, what else is there? Banning youth football would be like banning hamburgers. "You’ll just get rogue leagues," says neurosurgeon Julian Bailes, the chairman of Pop Warner’s medical-advisory committee and a former Steelers team doctor. He is, more significantly, a major player in CTE research. With Bailes at the helm, Pop Warner isn’t hiding from the issue. "Look, if we outlaw football," he says, "the public, the parents, the coaches, are not going to stop playing football. They’re just not. They’ll form unorganized leagues where we have much less of a chance to screen the coaches, organize them, and police them. We have 20,000 coaches at Pop Warner. We have 4,000 games every weekend."
Two shocking violations were committed by the Junior Midgets in the aftermath of the glorious blowout of the Redondo Beach Sea Hawks—check it, LV is now 30–1!—and so at film the night before the next game, Udinski first needs to rebuke and reel his boys in.
The victory over Redondo Beach is, of course, huge. One more round to go, tomorrow, against the West Volusia, Florida, Junior Midget Wolves. Win that game and they play to become the best Junior Midget Division II team in America. Super Bowl champions.
Parents will not sleep tonight. Siblings will not sleep. Coaches will not sleep. The collective inhale is like a hurricane gathering strength.
But first Udinski needs to admonish and make his boys accountable.
Violation Number One: Some of the boys were overheard saying, "That girl’s hot."
"Those girls were juniors and seniors in high school!" he says. "Out of your league. Don’t be idiots."
Violation Number Two: Some of the boys were spotted wearing their hats sideways.
"I don’t like flat-brim hats to begin with, but... Listen, your parents work very hard to give you a great life. Don’t degrade what they’ve accomplished for you. I don’t want to see you walking around with that hat sideways again. Be thankful and humble. You understand? How many of you watched the game on ESPN archives? Because if you watch it, your head’s going to get really big. Oh, my God, they talked us up so much, it was pathetic. We haven’t done anything. We won one game in Florida. We won one game. Be thankful and humble. You understand?"
Seated on the carpeted floor, most of the boys have their heads down, elbows leaning on knees, all of them crowded in front of the flat-screen that has not yet been turned on. It’s a windowless suite, up high in Disney’s glamorous Swan and Dolphin Resort, a war room provided by one of the grandparents. They’re used to these lectures, one of many in a series of how not to become an asshole. How to perform at your highest level, succeed brilliantly at it, and not become an asshole.
When LV wins tomorrow against West Volusia, Udinski will call Ward, his eldest son, and say, "Okay, we won. Now come on down." And Ward will fly down from college to come watch the championship game.
When they win. People have started saying it that way. It’s so obvious now. Laser precision in the game against Redondo Beach. After two years as a team, they have reached perfection. And there is something called fate. There is something called the power of history like a mighty wind pushing inexorably toward glory.
Udinski has film for tomorrow’s game. Oh, yes, he has film of the West Volusia Wolves.
"Okay, their best guy is 22," he’s saying in the hotel suite, the boys gathered around the TV, leaning on one another. "If 22 goes in motion, it’s jet-sweep, jet-sweep, jet-sweep 22!"
He tells them to be tough, to be soldiers, to attack. "It’s a violent game on the line of scrimmage, boys. I’m not going to tell you anything else. All right? It’s a legalized street fight. Every snap of the play. You can punch, you can chop guys’ knees out. You can do whatever you want inside the tackle box. You can hit them in the back, you can hit them in the top of the back, the bottom of the back, wherever you want inside the tackle box. Legalized street fight. And if you approach it that way, then the announcer’s going to start talking about what I want to hear about: ’My goodness, that offensive line is beating the crap out of them.’
"So look. See this formation? You guys aren’t paying attention_._ I’m going to rewind...."
West Volusia, first of all, has cheerleaders. Bouncing silver-and-blue girls with ringlets. West Volusia has bleachers full of parents. They live like forty-five minutes away from here, and so a stampede of fans was able to follow.
The LV moms have rattles, Gatorade bottles with popcorn kernels the siblings stayed up late making. The dads stand together like a small herd of donkeys, close to the fifty-yard line, not speaking. The moms talk about how the dads never talk to them, or even stand near them, during game time.
Number 22 is a freight train, taller than everyone else, fast as a kite, just like the coach said. The boys snap to it, get in line, ecute.
Stack!
Stay in your lanes!
Stack regular! Out of the box, guys. Out of the box!
Jumbo!
At the end of the first quarter, a tie score, 8–8. It’s hot. Florida hot. The sun like melting plastic on your skin. Jeezus. There was a breeze during Redondo Beach. There were clouds. The West Volusia fans scream Yeeeeooooh! when any tiny thing goes the West Volusia way, a deep, growing thunder.
Reece in the shotgun. He’s got time. He throws a spiral to Cole, tight as a rope, right into his hands. If you concentrate, you can hear the popcorn rattles and a skinny mom going, "LV!"
Two-yard line. The defense doesn’t flinch on the hard count. Reece hands it off to Cole, and he’s in for the score!
"LV! LV! ELLLLL VEEEE!"
Reece misses the kick, which in Pop Warner is a two-pointer. So it’s 14–8 LV.
West Volusia’s ball. Long pass to 22. He has a tattoo that says self made. It’s the second time LV has seen a Junior Midget with a tattoo.
Fumble! Twenty-two drops the ball. Recovered by LV!
The score holds, end of the first half, 14–8 LV.
Red-hot, drenched, sod stuck in helmets, the boys lie like beached seals underneath the shade of the red Pop Warner tent. Guzzling water. "You’re doing great. We’ve got to shut down the wedge. More fluids. Let’s finish it off. I want LV on three. One, two, three—"
When they win this game, they will celebrate. Properly. They will not wear hats sideways. They will not degrade girls. When they win this game.
Two minutes left in the third quarter, fourth and three for West Volusia grinding it out. West Volusia on the forty-five. Number 4 on the carry—4, 4, 4, all the way inside the ten, a footrace! LV’s Kendrick stops him near the goal line!
LV huddles up. Wait, where is Reece? Quarterback. Safety on defense. He never returned to the field after LV’s last offensive possession. The coach’s son, the leader of the team.
What the hell? "Reece! Reece!" He’s on the sidelines. Is he hurt? Coach Philip standing over him, shoving water at him. Todd on his knees. Reece crying? "I want to go back in. I want to go back in." He doesn’t go back in.
Everything moving so fast on the field—it’s the fourth quarter, and time is evaporating—the war must go on, to hell with drones, bodies tumbling, hot, wet, steam, loud, _yeeeee-ohhh! _Pounding. West Volusia is denied again and again into the fourth quarter, still 14–8 LV.
But something is going terribly wrong.
On their next possession, West Volusia number 4 connects with 22, to the one-yard line! West Volusia scores: 14–14!
Reece? We need Reece. This can’t be happening. After all the perfection, all the film, 500 miles watching games, fourteen years coaching, coaching since Reece was in the womb, this can’t be happening. Reece, on the sidelines, soggy, limp, frantic. "I want to go back in. I can’t remember—" His mom in the stands. "Todd! Todd! Todd! Does he need me?"
No.
This can’t be happening.
"Stop it!" Udinski shouts. To Reece complaining, to his noodle body, to the sun, to chemistry, to physics, to human limitation. "STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!"
Extra-point time for West Volusia. They hit this, they win the game. LV, a battalion without its lead guy. Confused, battle-worn. It’s love and honor now. Reece wandering. Reece rolling his head. "I want to go back in." Todd with his arm around him, walking him, more water, everything happening so fast. The blur of cheerleaders. All this noise. A puff of clouds. Puff, puff, puff. Number 5 is taller than the ref? The blur of it all, stuck together wrong, what is happening?
LV lines up. The West Volusia kicker swings his leg. Kendrick times his jump perfectly, soars as if sprung from a trampoline. And Kendrick blocks the kick! Kendrick saves the game!
It’s slow motion now. Glee! Dads leaping! Moms in tears! Rattle rattle, "LV!" Slow motion. A yellow flag up in the air. Up in the air. And then down on the grass. Thud, like a dead rat.
"Roughing the holder!"
_The what? _
Penalty LV.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU KIDDING ME! The holder? MINUTES LEFT IN A PLAYOFF GAME YOU DON’T MAKE A CALL NO ONE EVER EVEN HEARD OF!
Yeah, penalty LV. And so West Volusia gets another go. And this time, with the ball on the two, West Volusia runs it in for a point. It’s 15–14 West Volusia with six minutes left in the fourth quarter, and this can’t be happening.
"Reece?" We need Reece. He tries to go back in. A ding. It must have been just a ding. Football players get dings. Yeah. Sure. Okay. He throws to 44—sorta. It’s way over his head. The next play—Reece sacked by number 99. Trampled. Holy crap. The heat. Trampled. He stands, like a hollowed-out green bean. He tries again to connect with Kevin. A hundred million times he’s connected with Kevin. His timing, he can’t—sacked again, three guys on top of him. Or it could be more. Even the announcer can’t read the mess on the battlefield.
"And it’s a tackle by...a number of West Volusia defenders."
It’s a meat grinder in there. It’s your whole life on the line, and your team’s, and your coaches’, and your parents’, and all of their friends’.
One more time, Reece. Reece in there, trying to connect with 44, Reece throws a ball that makes no sense at all, a wobbling mess into no-man’s-land, to nothing, wobble wobble wobble picked off by West Volusia number 5.
And that will do it.
"Oh, what a game, baby!" Howling cheers from a hundred West Volusia proud. "Good game, Pennsylvania! We’re going to the Super Bowl.** **WEST VALOOOOOZHA!!!"
The scoreboard says "0.00." The scoreboard says "15–14," and everything else is "00.00.00.000." Boundaries break, the white line separating fans from players, the field overcome by jumping purple and silver. On the other end, soldiers melting back into boys. Weeping boys in gold and blue, thirty wins’ worth of tears unleashed. Rattles abandoned. Hugging and swaying. "I love you." "I love you." "I love you." The moms holding their broken baby boys.
Voices pile on top of one another, like people who just witnessed a plane crash or any other incalculable human tragedy. Parents, coaches, 12- and 13-year-old boys who do not like what it feels like to be turning into men. What happened? What just happened?
"Reece got a concussion."
"You don’t know that. You don’t just go saying that."
"They never think Pennsylvania brings down good teams. That’s why they made the bad call. Because we’re from Pennsylvania."
"Reece blamed the entire thing on himself. He was crying to me saying, ’Cole, it’s my fault.’ I was telling him no, it’s not."
"He was just dehydrated. He’s not used to playing in all this heat."
"He didn’t know what the plays were. He couldn’t remember what day it was."
"If he’s worried about himself, it’s the wrong thing to do. Focus on the team. It’s a team accomplishment, it’s a team win, it’s a team loss."
"I freaked out. I yelled at the ref. I was like, ’That’s BS!’ Excuse my language."
"One ref, just one ref."
"You can’t really process. We’re done. We’re just done."
"He told me about it. He got wrapped up by one kid, and then the other kid came in and just smashed his head or something. Another hit him, and his head just went crooked."
"I was about to poop my pants, because I wasn’t really quarterback all year, and Reece got hurt, and I was like, ’Oh crap. I don’t want to go in there now.’ The biggest game of the season and it’s the fourth quarter. It was third-and-twenty."
"Like, I’ll forget about it, and then all the sudden I just think, ’We lost.’ "
"That was it. That’s the last time Pop Warner."
"And I knew that was going to be the last time I could ever blitz for Pop Warner."
"One of the symptoms of concussions is that you have some mood swings. That’s in my research paper. I just thought that he might have a concussion because of that. He was saying it was his fault. I don’t think he did anything wrong."
"How do you make the call in those moments? Do they have to be unconscious? Everyone can see a broken bone or a swollen knee. You can’t see a concussion."
"He didn’t get hit in the head. He did not have a concussion. He doesn’t have concussion symptoms at all. His eyes weren’t dilated, his senses were there, he knew his name, he knew what was going on. He was dehydrated, number one. Then he starts getting banged around. He was just spent. We rested him a couple series, and that threw our chemistry off. You need every piece of your puzzle to win."
"You’re done, you’re done, you’re done."
"It wasn’t the hit. It was the landing. I can sort of remember now, but at the time I couldn’t really remember. I took the ball in a running play, and my head just got flung back. My head. My head just went back. It hit the ground. And I couldn’t remember much. I tried to go in at the end. I didn’t even know what the score was at the time."
"It’s like sunburn. You worry about the cumulative risk. But that doesn’t mean you spend your life inside."
"Guys, we have a choice to go to theme parks or watch football games. It doesn’t get much better than that. You understand? You’ve got to choose how you’re going to handle this. Stand up. Put your hands in the air. I want LV on three. One. Two. Three!"
"EL VEE!"
Jeanne Marie Laskas (@jmlaskasis a GQ correspondent.
