Mr. Q is Quiet

September 1, 2025December 13, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

I couldn’t put my finger on it, when one of my friends threw me a beach ball, but I felt something, something deep that I needed to explore. Its texture felt so cathartic that I scrunched my fingers on it, which led to an almost inexplicable connection. The smell of it, fresh out of its package, was such a unique scent that I knew there was something more to it. I just couldn’t put my finger on it when I put my finger on it.

It also felt naughty to scrunch it, and I wasn’t sure if the sound or the feel of that scrunching drove that reaction, but I wouldn’t stop until I uncovered what caused me to do it.

“What are you doing?” my friends asked with some disdain. I couldn’t think of anything to say, but I feared that they might talk about this later. They might say something like, “You think he’s normal? I once saw him scrunch a beach ball for about two minutes straight with a look on his face that I’ll never forget. That boy ain’t right.” I saw those impressions starting to form on the faces of my good friends, and I knew I should’ve snapped out of it, but I just couldn’t stop searching for the connection.

“C’mon, throw it!” my friends finally shouted from the pool, snapping me out of it.

I probably should’ve obsessed over it for a little longer, when it was fresh in the mind, but I didn’t. I decided to return to the normal and enjoy the rest of my day at the pool. Yet, every time I played with a new beach ball, and it had to be new, because the new beach ball had that new beach ball smell, I experienced that odd, impossible to place memory.

I don’t know how long it took me, decades at least, to remember that this unusual connection I had with that material harkened back to the days in kindergarten when I first met The Letter People.

*******

“We’re not to touch The Letter People!” our real teacher, a Mrs. Chamberlain, informed us when she introduced us to the first Letter Person we met, a Mr. M. “We’re going to learn a lot about The Letter People throughout the year, and we’re going to learn a lot from them. They will become our friends, but we are not to touch them!” I didn’t know what Mr. M had going on, or what this was all about, but I was all into it.

By the time Mrs. Chamberlain introduced us to the second character, a Mr. T, I recognized the routine she was developing. We were going to meet a new character at various intervals, once a week it turned out. The second introduction wasn’t as overwhelming as the first, but I found so much comfort in this routine that I no longer cried when my mother left me to the charge of Mrs. Chamberlain.

By the time we moved past the introductory characters, I gradually moved past the carefully constructed mystiques Mrs. Chamberlain and company manufactured for us. I began to see them as the teaching tools they were, but I also began to think The Letter People visited us from another land, a Middle Earth of sorts, similar to the land J.R.R. Tolkien created with his own level of creativity.

Before meeting the first Letter Person, I was horrible at managing expectations and anticipation. I must have been a miserable kid in that regard for my mom, as she taught me how to make X’s on a calendar, so I wouldn’t bother as much about how many days away expected days were. When I began anticipating the day of arrival of the next Letter Person in the same miserable manner I did the other hallowed days, my mom had a word with Mrs. Chamberlain, and we found out that Mondays were the new hallowed days in my life, and I would ‘X’ my way to Mondays.

I eagerly anticipated the day of introduction for each Letter Person, but to be quite honest most of them didn’t have the star power, the it factor that Mr. M and Mr. T had. I realized, on some level, that the rest of them were just learning vehicles for kindergarten kids that needed to know the spelling system of our language, and they needed to know the rules of how letters represent sounds, and how words are spelled. I might overestimate how advanced I was in kindergarten, but my mom was such an active parent that most of what my kindergarten peers were learning for the first time was retread for me. Whatever the case was, The Letter People lost some of their magic in the routine of the months that followed, until I met Mr. Q.

I still remember the day I met Mr. Q. He stood on the opposite side of the entrance with our new substitute teacher, a Miss Landow, standing sentry, obstructing our ability to form a complete sensorial connection with him.

Mr. Q felt rarely used, mostly ignored, and an underdog who is often misunderstood. Mr. Q felt like an avant-garde phoneme, before I knew what avant-garde and phoneme meant. He wasn’t the last Letter Person I met, and I don’t know if I knew all this, or sensed it, but I remember feeling a special connection to Mr. Q based on the subtle idea that no one else connected to him the way they did the other Letter People.

Mr. Q was quiet. His special feature/superpower was silence. As my mother could surely attest, I never thought of being quiet before, and I never met anyone who operated in silence before I met Mr. Q. The concept was so foreign to me that I decided to try it out.

“What’s wrong?” my mom asked me. “You’re so quiet.” I don’t remember if that question validated my new existence, if it emboldened me to pursue the idea of silence, or if I thought I was really onto something, but I loved the power of silence in those moments.

As opposed to the other Letter People, Mr. Q silently observed the people, places and things around him, and when he did eventually speak, it proved powerful. I found that concept intoxicating. I thought there was something more mysterious and cryptic about Mr. Q, than Mr. V, Mr. W, Mr. X, Mr. Y, Mr. Z and all the other, more obvious characters. Those characters arrived last, bearing cryptic gifts and challenging the orthographic orthodoxy. I found them mysterious, ironic, and possibly unstable.

*******

Other than Buggs Bunny, I don’t remember having unusual, almost spiritual attachments to cartoon characters before I met The Letter People. I may have been just as nutty over other things, but I don’t remember them having such a profound effect on me. I was so eager to meet these new characters that I managed to get over the idea that I could no longer spend every waking hour with my mom. I looked forward to going to school just to meet these new characters.

I tried to get to know more about them than anyone else did, just to increase my level of familiarity, but there wasn’t more to know. Knowing this made me feel so limited. There’s nothing to figure out about blowup dolls, and I know that now, but as a six-year-old kid these mysterious figures called out to me. They wanted to get to know me as much as I wanted to get to know them. Our kindergarten, class photo showed all the students and teachers saying cheese and smiling for the camera, but I was smiling at The Letter People near me.

Dogs have ways of making foreign objects talk to them. They sniff and sometimes inhale them, until they end up sneezing twelve times in a row. When their powerful sense of smell doesn’t help them understand a foreign object any better, they try eating it, urinating on it, or attempting to procreate with it. When they fail to arrive at some form of greater understanding of its purpose, they move on (Jack Russell Terriers and Beagles excepted). Their motto is “Try, try and try again, and then move on. No sense making a fool out of yourself.” I was not/am not wired that way. My obsessive brain could not let things go, for better and worse, and I obsessed over these mysterious figures called The Letter People.

When I couldn’t learn my individual definition of the essence of these Letter People from afar, I wanted to touch them and play with them to learn everything I could about them. I wanted to be their friends and spend time with them to get to know them better, but we were deprived our sense of touch.

As nice and sweet as Mrs. Chamberlain was, her, “They’re not toys, and we’re not to touch them” carried some weight with us. She either had an authoritative way about her, or her beauty and demeanor granted her authority. I write the latter in association with psychological studies that suggest kids, even as young as five and six, behave better when their teacher is young and beautiful, because they want to be her. Mrs. Chamberlain had those qualities, and she spoke in an ethereal tone that reminded us of Glenda the Good Witch. Whatever the case was, when Mrs. Chamberlain laid down the law, we listened.

My guess is that Miss Chamberlain and the school administrators probably developed their “No touching” rule based on precedent. Kids like me probably found that once they derived some sense of the essence of these characters, they couldn’t stop. They probably developed the rule to prevent us from even getting started down that road. Depriving me of the sense of touch only elevated the mystique of these characters, as I realized I would need to find other ways to learn more about them.

By the time we met Mr. F, Mrs. Chamberlain was no longer our teacher. She was pregnant, they informed us. I didn’t know what that meant, but I learned that being pregnant meant she was going to be gone for the rest of the year.

“Does that mean she’ll be gone for a while?” I asked my mom through tears.

“No, she’ll probably be gone for the rest of the year,” my mom said, and I assume she used more compassionate words to try to somehow soften the crushing blow for me.

A Miss Landow stepped in her place, and Miss Landow was a less attractive, more authoritative woman. Miss Landow informed us that Mrs. Chamberlain’s “No touching” rule for The Letter People would be upheld, and she meant that in no uncertain terms. Miss Landow, however, did not have the leadership mystique Mrs. Chamberlain did.

I don’t know if it was Miss Landow’s first day on the job, or first week, but Tommy Spenceri decided to challenge her authority. Either that, or he didn’t have the patience I did to work through his progressions. Whatever the case was, Tommy could no longer abide by the “no touching” policy anymore when we met Mr. F, and his floppy feet. He rushed to the front of the classroom to employ what a defensive tackle in football would call a bull rush, and he knocked Mr. F off his floppy feet. He hit Mr. F square, drove him onto his back and popped him. Nobody screamed that I remember, but I was on the verge of it. Tommy ruined Mr. F before I got to know the man, and Tommy deprived me of developing whatever relationship I might have developed with Mr. F.

Tommy Spenceri was six, I know that now, but back then I considered his flagrant violation of protocol so horrendous that I couldn’t look at Tommy without disdain for his inability to restrain his primal impulses. When Mr. F returned, the next day, his hole was taped to help him retain air pressure, but I couldn’t look at him, because he appeared weak to me now, tainted as it were, and I had no respect for him. It’s a bit callous, I know, but how many six-year-olds know anything about the complex emotion of sympathy?

The one thing that Tommy introduced to me was the concept of moderation. I was never going to commit what I considered a flagrant violation of protocol as horrendous as he did, but with Mrs. Chamberlain gone, her leadership mystique went with her, and to my six-year-old mind, that opened a window of opportunity. I don’t remember the exact timeline involved here, but at some point I conspired with my younger brother, a heist of a Letter Person. I wasn’t sure which Letter Person I would steal, or if I would steal all of them. I had favorites, but I didn’t want to play favorites. I didn’t want to leave a man behind, so my plan broadened out to stealing two of them, to three, to however many I could grab. I was not the type of kid who stole things, and I considered the whole idea shocking, and I considered how shocked and disappointed my mom would be if I was caught. I was so in love that The Letter People that it grew into an obsessive, unhealthy love that some might characterize as stalking.

Immediately after Tommy Spenceri committed his horrendous violation, I was disappointed that Miss Landow, and the powers that be, didn’t punish Tommy as severely as I thought they should’ve. They gave him what they called a “stern talking to”. Tommy violated the sanctity of The Letter People, and their primary “no touching” rule, and all they gave him was a “stern talking to”? Tommy maintained his smug smile throughout this “stern talking to”, and I watched it all thinking that they weren’t do enough to protect The Letter People.

When I began plotting and planning this heist, my perspective on Tommy’s soft punishment changed. I now realized that if they caught me, they might give me nothing more than a “stern talking to”.

While in the planning stages, I realized that I didn’t know where The Letter People went after our week with them was over, and I decided to start watching the routines of Miss Landow in the coming week to see what she did with The Letter People when our lesson plan concluded. I don’t remember how sophisticated my plans were, but I remembered those people who stole things in movies, and I saw how often their episodes ended in gunfire with the thieves who survived eventually going to jail. As much as I wanted to spend more time with The Letter People, and become better friends with them as a result, I figured that I wasn’t ready for gun play, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do well in jail. I eventually chickened out, because as much as I wanted to spend the rest of my life with The Letter People, I couldn’t stand the thought of life without my mom. I tried to live a life without her once before, when I ran away from home, and she let me. Everyone considered thought it was so funny that I couldn’t get to the end of the block without her, and I found it humiliating to realize I wasn’t able to exist on my own.

With that fantasy out of sight and out of mind, I moderated further. I developed a foolproof plan based on the patterns and behaviors I watched the various players in our school for the next couple of days. When we went to recess and played on the playground for however long it took, Miss Landow stayed with us, observing us. On the rare occasion someone had to use the restroom, she allowed them to go inside the school, unmonitored and unaccompanied, to use the facilities. Once I mustered up the courage, and that took some time, I asked to be excused from recess.

The path to the restroom and our classroom were the same, until we hit a fork in the hall, turn right and we’re headed to the open-doored classroom. Turn left, and we’re headed to the bathroom. I thought about this in the planning stages, and I followed my plan to the letter. After asking her if I could go to the restroom, I approached the fork in the hall as casually as I did any other time I went to the restroom, and I turned left to the restroom. I stood on that corner and looked back at Miss Landow. I could see her through a window in the door, talking to a fellow teacher and laughing about something. I carefully looked in every direction, and then I held my breath and crossed the hall and entered into our kindergarten classroom.

I felt a “whoosh” of emotion when I crossed that threshold, as it was my first experience with committing something so wrong it felt right. I looked back down the hall and up the hall to see if anyone witnessed my transgression. The coast was clear. My immediate thought was to initiate plan A and steal Mr. Q, but I couldn’t think of a way to conceal him well enough to sneak him out the door. Years later, I wondered why I didn’t just deflate him and hide him in my shirt, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t know Mr. Q was inflated back then.

When I finally stood before Mr. Q, I didn’t know what to do. My plan B did not include any details of what I should do when I was finally alone with him, because I didn’t think I’d make it that far. I didn’t want to tackle him, or hurt him in the brutish manner Tommy Spenceri did. I just wanted to touch him little, and I did. It felt a little naughty, but it felt cathartic and pleasing in an almost spiritual manner to run my fingers across him. Then, I touched him so much that I began squeezing him softly, and when I did it made a scrunching sound that I enjoyed. I scrunched him a little more, and then I lowered to a knee and sniffed him, and Mr. Q’s scent was so unique and pleasing that I neared him even more and inhaled that smell deeply.

For most people, memories of childhood are relative. Some remember a few snapshots from high school, some go back further, but very very few can remember anything beyond sixth grade. This moment I spent with Mr. Q felt so special that I would recall it, decades later, when I held a beach ball for far so long for my friends gave me a look that suggested I was doing something concerning. I also remember that I would continue to use the restroom excuse to visit the other Letter People we met after Mr. Q, onto the final days with Mr. Z, but my sensorial and physical relationship with Mr. Q, who I knew would remain quiet about our interaction, was the most special.

When the class photo day arrived, months after we began meeting these characters, Miss Landow brought back Mr. T and Mr. M for the photo, because they were the most popular, but I wanted to spend more time with Mr. Q and the other Letter People that weren’t as popular. We didn’t spend as much time with them, and in my opinion, we never truly got to know them or learn their essence.

Years later, my brother discovered that there was a The Letter People television show. Back then, a kid in kindergarten spent a half-day at school, and he was able to watch that show while I was in school. That destroyed me a little, because I felt my relationship with these characters, three years out, still felt incomplete. I was so bitter and angry that I could barely contain myself. I eventually saw this show, and I don’t remember if it occurred in the first episode I saw, or soon thereafter, but my interest waned quickly. I was too young to know that someone wrote and directed these episodes, and I knew nothing about voice actors, or any of the players involved in such a production, but I thought they did it wrong, all wrong.

“There’s no way Mr. T talks like that,” I, a budding critic, told my brother. I also complained about the various interactions of these characters in whatever nine-year-old verbiage and understanding of the world I had at the time. I thought almost all of the characters were wrong, or different than what I imagined. It wouldn’t be the last time a production left me feeling disillusioned, but when my brother later urged me to watch another episode with him, I told him I wouldn’t be watching it again. I didn’t know it then, but watching these characters actually interact with one another ruined all the mystiques I built up for them when I imagined who they were, what they cared about, and how they might interact with me if I ever got the chance to meet them in real life. I was obviously a kid with an overactive imagination, but when I finally recalled why the feel and smell of a beach ball was so special to me, I realized what an incredible time I had being a kid, and I had The Letter People to thank for their small role in it.

So, you want to be a Kindergarten, Flag Football Coach

May 8, 2019November 6, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

We should applaud anyone who volunteers to coach kindergarten football. It’s not easy, it’s a learn-as-you-go job, but it is rewarding and fun. In their own intangible ways, these kids appreciate what you’re doing for them. Most of them want to play football, and in some ways, they’re receptive to what we’re saying, because they want to learn the game beyond what they see on TV.

In my year-and-a-half of teaching kindergarten kids the game of football, I developed a few rules, based upon trial and error. Two quick notes before we continue: These are tidbits and observations, nothing more and nothing less. I will also use the term “tackle” to describe the act of pulling a flag, as this discussion focuses on flag football.

Be a Coach with a Plan. Enter your season with a plan. Develop a few bullet points, or talking points, that you want your team to know by season’s end. These bullet points should focus on teaching the kids some of the fundamentals of playing football. Walk into your first meeting with the team thinking that if you can teach them a couple of things that will stick, your season will be a success. Accomplishing this, of course, requires repetition. My advice to the new coaches is to watch some YouTube videos on “coaching kindergarten flag football”. Some of these videos provide some very helpful drills a coach can run in practice, and they offer some simple plays to run. Some of these plays involve simple fakes, reverses, and some simple passes. This leads us to rule#2:
Keep it simple. If this is your first season with a fresh group of youngsters, you’ll witness more organized teams pull better fakes and more complicated plays. I don’t know if they practice more often, or if they stick together for years, but in my experience, it’s best to keep all plays as simple as possible. Again, the best thing you can do, as a kindergarten coach, is teach them the basics of the game.
We’re talking about practice. Some leagues require one mid-week practice. Anyone who has worked with kindergartners knows that coaches need to make their practices simple, active, and participatory. If you are a born leader with a commanding presence, and your team is largely comprised of good kids, they might behave 51% of the time, but those who enter into this with the idea that they can manage adults, and they have a well-behaved child, might be in for a shock when they try to corral 10-to-12 other peoples’ kids at the same time. They’re not bad kids, but they are kids, kindergarten aged kids. My advice is to try to diminish the chaos is try to develop drills and activities that don’t let the kids stand around idle. If there is some idle time for some of them, you might want to develop an activity until their turn arrives. (Some examples are jumping jacks and other forms of running in place. Whatever we do, we want to keep them moving.) If you’re lucky, another parent will volunteer to assist you. If that’s the case, divide the team into offense and defense for drills, then allow them to scrimmage. Drills are important, but they do create a line of kids with nothing to do until it’s their turn. Kids will also run around and pull each others’ flags off. A rule we incorporate is, if you pull someone’s flag, while playing around, you have to put it back on.
No Juking. When game time rolls around, one of the most important rules we try to teach the kids is, “When you have the ball, don’t try to juke, shimmy, or shake your opponent.” Most kids want to flash the dreams they have of becoming an NFL running back, but at this level we need to teach them that the key to scoring more touchdowns is to run straightforward as much as possible. “How difficult it is for you to pull flags when someone is running past you?” we ask them. “You have one, quick chance right? The toughest flags to pull are those on someone who is running as fast as they can. When you run your fastest, it’s just as tough for the other team to tackle you.” Another reason for this bullet point is that when the child starts juking they never stop. This can lead to a huge loss of yards, and more likely the child exhausting themselves by attempting to run the miraculous run that can last a minute and a half for a two-yard gain.
Two hands. Two eyes. “When you catch the ball, use two hands and two eyes. Look the ball in.” We institute this rule to try to prevent them from running before they catch the ball. (Once they secure the catch, we can tell them to run, but this happens so infrequently that we should be able to get away with only preaching those first two steps for at least half the season.
On defense, we teach the principle of “side integrity”. It might sound like a complex concept for kindergartners, but that might be why they like it. Our advice to our outside defenders (linebackers or corners), “Don’t let the ball carrier run outside of you, because if they get past you, it’s probably a touchdown.” We line our outside defenders outside the furthest player on the other team, and we stress that they not let the runner outside of them, even if they don’t make the tackle. 4b) “When the other team tries to block you inside, watch the ball, and the minute it moves outside your blocker, use a spin move on the blocker to get outside of them. (Some of the kids love the idea of a spin move, as we can tell them NFL players use it to get past blockers. It also seems tricky and an advanced concept to the kids, and some of them use it quite well. They are also quite proud when they do it well, regardless if they make the tackle.) “Even if you don’t make the tackle,” we tell them, “you need to push the runner inside to the rest of your teammates.”
Safety. We established the position of Safety as the most important position on the defense. As a result, every kid on our team wants to play Safety. (It might also have something to do with the idea that kids don’t like being blocked.) Based on the idea that this became the most prized position on defense, we developed a rule, whoever made the last “tackle” on the last play becomes the safety on the next play. Everyone wanted to be safety, so they strove to make the tackle. (This also ended the “Can I play safety?” yells that occurred after every play.)
Back at Practice. When you’re done with the repetitious drills, in practice, let the kids have some flag football fueled fun. We call one of these games Sharks and Minnows. The shark(s) (two if you have over seven participants and one if you have less) start in the middle, and they try to pull the flags of all of the other players (the minnows). When a shark “tackles” a minnow that minnow then becomes a shark, and they join the shark(s) in trying to tackle the other minnows remaining, until there is only one minnow left. Other than teaching them how to pull flags, the game also teaches them the concept of boundaries, as we set up four-to-six cones to mark out of bounds.
First game. Your first game will probably be a disaster, if you’re a new coach starting out with a bunch of newbies. It’s important that we do two things here. First, during the game, we need to compliment the players for every good play they make on the spot. A casual high five with a “there you go Joey!” will do wonders to lift that morale and self-esteem. When the game is over, remain enthusiastic, regardless of the outcome. You will learn some things about your team, and the game itself, after your first game, and you will need to make some necessary adjustments, but try to stick to the tenets of your game plan. At this level, if you’re in it to win it, you’re probably in it for the wrong reason.
Plays. In this, my first season, I flirted with dropping the whole notion of plays, as they only invite more questions and different levels of chaos, but just handing the ball off on every play doesn’t teach kids the fundamentals of the game very well. On the subject of plays, I don’t think it will shock the potential volunteer to learn that if you plan to have a playbook, the goal should be to as simple as possible. I thought adding a simple reverse would fall under this heading, until I witnessed one in real time. (Picture a herd of wet cats attempting to run to the source and away from it at the same time.) I also added a pass play, in which the receiver runs a simple curl route. I thought this was a simple enough play, until I saw it play out live. (If the coach is lucky, they’ll have one player who can throw and one player who can catch. It’s the coach’s job to determine who can do this with some modicum of success.) The goal here is not necessarily to achieve a good play, a touchdown, or a win. We just want to put every player in a position to succeed, and if a player doesn’t throw or catch well, they might become demoralized. The coach should also prepare for the idea that most players won’t know what they’re supposed to do on any given play, so you’ll have to provide individual instructions to each player before the snap, and you’ll have to tell them where to stand. Again, the coach will have to accomplish this while trying to keep the referee happy by getting your players to the line and pulling off a play in time.
Repetition. The kindergarten coach should prepare to repeat their very specific instructions throughout the season, and answer all questions that follow. The most popular question a coach will have to answer in each huddle is, “When do I get to I score a touchdown?” My pat response is, “That team over there is not going to let you score a touchdown. You have to go get it, when it’s your turn.” The reason we must continually express the idea of turns is that once they score a touchdown, they want to do it on every play, and as many times as we express the idea, most kindergarten-age children don’t fully comprehend the idea of taking turns, or if they do, they don’t prefer it.
One voice in the huddle. “Coach! Coach! Coach!” is something every kindergarten, flag football coach will hear in a huddle, on just about every play. When the coach responds, they are likely to hear classic gems like, “I have a new shirt,” “I felt a raindrop,” or “I have a loose (or new) tooth.” Then there are the most common questions that follow every play, “When do I get the ball?” and “When do I get to score a touchdown?” The other comments I’ve heard are, “I don’t have a mouthpiece,” and “how come you’re not wearing sunglasses today?” Some of the kindergarten children repeat the shouts of “coach!” so often, while you’re attempting to tell the players involved in the next play how to run it that by the time we get to their question/comment, they forget what they wanted to ask/say. Once we complete that exercise, and get the kids to the line of scrimmage, ready to run the play in the time allotted by the referee, be prepared for them to forget everything you just said. Even when we keep it as simple as possible, by telling them to hand the ball off and run left, they often run right about 50% of the time. (Hint: point the direction of the play out to them. It’s okay to remind them at the line which way they should go, because chances are most of the kindergartners on the other side of the ball aren’t listening to you either.)
“We can only have one voice in the huddle,” is something we say in the huddle. Some comply, but most forget these instructions when the next play rolls around. I’ve instructed them to keep all comments and questions related to football, but they’re kindergartners. One important note to add here is the patience and understanding a flag football coach must employ. Remind yourself, throughout the game, that they’re kindergarten kids. Most of them have the retention levels of a goldfish, and they can’t remember what we said five seconds ago.

Injuries. Anytime kids are involved in a game that involves running, they will inevitably run into one another. Most volunteer coaches have no experience in such matters. The simplest thing to do is address each injury on the spot. Depending on the severity of the injury, of course, our goal should be to diffuse the minor injuries that occur in a game. Ask the injured player if they are okay, where they are hurt, and what happened. Most kids need nothing more than a couple plays off, and a drink of water, and they are okay. We might also need to address the fact that the other kid didn’t injure them on purpose. It was just a part of the game.
Displays of Anger. The coach will also have to deal with the emotional aftermath of a child having their flag pulled. To us, this is part of the play. Person A runs down the field, person B pulls their flag, and the play is over. To the kindergarten mind, this is a humiliating condemnation of their athletic ability. They might regard it as an unfair part of the game, or the coach’s fault. At times, they will express their anger. When we experienced such a display, we simply moved on and let his parents handle the matter. As a voice of authority, on the field, the inclination might be to correct that child’s behavior in some way, but we have to remember that these are other people’s kids. It might embarrass us to have one of our team members act this way, but we have to respect our boundary while trying to keep control of the individual players. The best advice I provide the disappointed kids who don’t succeed on a play is to have a short-term memory. “Try your hardest on every play, but if you don’t succeed, employ a ‘next play’ mentality.” Also, if they gained any yards, focus them on that. This mindset requires repetition. I developed this short-term mindset after years of playing recreational sports. It worked well for me, but it’s often too complex for the disappointed, kindergarten mind to comprehend.
Winning and Losing. We all have egos. All coaches want their game plan to work, and we want our coaching techniques to result in wins. A season and a half of kindergarten coaching have taught me to control what I can control. Let the players worry about winning and losing. We should also make sure we take turns giving the ball to each kid. Not only is that what they signed up for, but it maintains their focus. I try to compliment each player on their strength and ignore any weaknesses they might have. This keeps them happy, focused and interested. The most important ingredient is to try to keep it fun for the kids. Structure is vital, of course, but we need to institute a balance of fun and structure.
Dealing with Kids. After dealing with these kids one hour a day, for six weeks, I now have profound respect for anyone who chooses a career that requires them to deal with kindergarten age children full-time. If, at one time, I considered my son’s teachers unreasonably strict, by instituting a level of structure to try to establish some level of order, I now empathize. “Could you take care of Johnny today? I can’t deal with Johnny today,” I heard one kindergarten teacher say to their assistant. I was shocked at the time, because I thought it meant the kindergarten teacher couldn’t control her class. I now have a couple of Johnnies that I only deal with for one hour a week, and if I could have one on-field assistant answer the questions, and tend to, just one of my Johnnies, I probably wouldn’t be writing this piece to voice my frustrations.