Mr. Q is Quiet

September 1, 2025April 20, 2026 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 that I needed to explore. I’m not one who searches for such things, but some of the times they find us. The texture of that beach ball felt so unusual that I looked down at it. It was fresh out of the package, and I thought the reason I never noticed the texture of a beach ball before was that I never handled one fresh out of the package before. I threw the ball to my friends without thinking too much about it. When it finally made its way back around to me, I caught it near my face. I accidentally caught a huge whiff of the beach ball, and that unique scent put me back, somewhere. I couldn’t put my finger on it when I put my finger on it.

The beach ball also felt naughty to scrunch, and I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed the sound of the scrunching or the feel of it, but I knew I wanted to keep doing it.

“What are you doing, throw it,” my friends yelled. I knew scrunching was weird, and I knew if I kept doing it, they’d start talking. “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, because I learned it does no good to press and obsess over issues like these, because when they’re gone they’re just gone. Trying to retrieve them is basically pointless. I don’t know how long it took me, decades at least, to remember that this unusual connection I had with the material of a beach ball harkened back to the days 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 developing routine. We were going to meet a new character at regular intervals, but I couldn’t figure out how regular. 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 those introductory characters, I began to move past the idea that they were teaching tools, and I began to think The Letter People visited us from another land, a Middle Earth of sorts, similar to the land J.R.R. Tolkien later introduced me to in The Hobbit.

I’ve never been great at waiting, but it’s been reported that I was horrible at it before I learned how to tell time. After teaching me that my mom taught me how to mark the passage of time with ‘X’s on calendar, so I wouldn’t bother her so much about how many days away my expected days were. When I began anticipating the day of arrival of the next Letter Person in the same miserable manner I did 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 tools for kindergarten kids who needed to learn the various uses of the alphabet in our language. 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, I was a little bored by the routine of The Letter People for a time, as the routine of school sapped some of their magic in the months that followed, until I met Mr. Q.

*******

I still remember the day I met Mr. Q for the first time. He stood on the right side of the entrance with our new substitute teacher, a Miss Landow, as she stood in her usual spot welcoming us to class for the day. “We’re not to touch Mr. Q,” she reminded me, as she seemed to sense that I was going to try to establish a greater connection with him. I obeyed, but I no longer viewed Miss Landow as a host, greeting us for the day. I viewed her as a sentry obstructing our ability to form a complete sensorial connection with him, and I resented her for it.

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 considered 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 never heard the word philosophical, much less philosophical concept, but I found this idea of operating on an entirely different plane than everyone else intoxicating. I focused on the idea that just because everyone was talking, it didn’t mean I had to add my two cents. Some of the times, I imagined Mr. Q saying, there’s more power in silence. I found that cryptic and mysterious, even a little ironic, and possibly unstable.

*******

I’ve had an unusual, almost spiritual connection to “something different” for so long that until I remembered my association with Mr. Q, I didn’t think it had a point of origin. It doesn’t matter what genre it is in music, movies, or books, if it falls under the heading “something different”, I’ll at least give it a crack, probably develop a crush, if the author successfully manages the tightrope between developing something organically different and writing something that is different for the sake of being different, I’ll probably fall madly in love. My obsession with something different may have started before The Letter People, but I don’t remember that far back. I only remember that knowing that when I was going to new Letter Person, it made the idea that I could no longer spend every waking hour with my mom a little easier. I actually 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, 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.

Beagles have ways of making foreign objects talk to them. They sniff and sometimes inhale them so deeply that 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 dogs 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 does not let things go, for better and worse, and I obsessed over these mysterious figures called The Letter People.

When I couldn’t further 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 couldn’t touch them.

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 developed their “No touching” rule based on precedent, because kindergarten kids can’t stop. Again, my memory serves me well, because it reminds me that I was far more intelligent than my peers, and I was so bored that I ventured out, and my guess is they probably developed their “No touching” rule for kids like me who couldn’t stop. Yet, 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 got pregnant, and 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 this happened on Miss Landow’s first day on the job, or first week, but Tommy Spenceri decided to challenge her edict. 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 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 what that means 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, 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’s impulsive act taught 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. I also knew how shocked and disappointed my authority figures and my mom would be if I was caught. Yet, I was so obsessed The Letter People that it grew into something some might characterize as unhealthy, even for a kindergarten-aged child.

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 knew that when people stole things in the movies, it often ended in gunfire. I also knew that the thieves who survived the gunfire went 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 wasn’t sure if I was ready for gun play, but I knew I wouldn’t do well in jail. I tried to live without my mom once, when ran away from home, and that worked out so poorly that friends and family talked about it for years after. Everyone considered it 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, monitoring and 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 worth remembering. 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 at the end of the school year, Miss Landow brought back some of the old Letter People we met to stand in that photo. While every other student, Miss Landow, and an assistant teacher said cheese for the camera, I smiled at the Letter People. Thanks to my regular “restroom” visits I thought I knew them, and their essence, better than anyone else in the class.

Years later, my brother discovered that there was an actual The Letter People television show. I was stunned and shocked, and I don’t know how I verified it, or if I just took my brother’s word for it, but I had to see that show. The problem was that show aired when I was in school, and my brother was so young that he was able to watch that show, and I wasn’t. That destroyed me a little, because I thought he might be developing a better relationship with them than the one I had. I was so bitter and angry that I told him to stop telling me about the episodes. 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 six-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. Watching the Letter People interact could’ve and probably should’ve ruined all the mystiques I built for them in my personal interactions with them, but it didn’t because I thought I knew them on a level no one else did. I thought I knew them on a level that could critique what others thought they knew. My guess was that those who created that show didn’t know who the Letter People were, what they cared about, and how they interacted with people in real life.

When I finally made the connection between Mr. Q and the feel and smell of that beach ball, the totality of the connection, as it pertained to my story and the “something different” elements that have defined me, didn’t immediately strike me. There wasn’t a “whoosh!” of understanding that overcame me, but I had an answer. The connection did remind me what an incredibly fun imagination I once had as kid. My immediate thought was “Holy crap, I wish I could go back to that. That was so fun.” I basically created this world where I lived with intimate knowledge of The Letter People, and that led me to think about all of the other worlds I created for my comfort and amusement. Those worlds felt so real to me back then that they were actually kind of embarrassing to talk about for decades after, because I went so far overboard. I stretched my imagination into realms that caused the smiles of my listeners to fade, because most people consider exaggerations a little concerning and/or weird. They also immediately react with a harmless insult such as, “I’m going to guess you didn’t have a lot of friends, non-imaginary friends.” It’s funny, of course, but it’s also not true. I had a lot of friends, imaginary and real.

The final thing that struck me was as enjoyable as reliving those memories proved to be that fun, almost artistic imagination of childhood is pretty much gone now. I did wish I could go back to having that imagination that was so incredible that it was almost embarrassing to talk about, but I also know that there is always a tradeoff. So, even if I were to find a bottle with a genie in it, I wouldn’t trade my current scientific and mathematical understandings of the ways of universe with the incredibly creative one I had as a kid, because as wonderful and beautiful as the childish imagination could be, it also comes equipped with the confusion and fears of the unknown that can be just as powerful and scary, and when we’re huffing on a beach ball remembering the former, with such a huge smile that it can cause a tear to form, sometimes we forget the latter.

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

May 8, 2019May 4, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

The first thing we need to do is applaud you for volunteering to coach kindergarten-aged kids to play football. You’re one of the few, the proud, the kindergarten football coaches. Parenting kindergarten-aged child is not easy, as you know, and coaching/teaching kindergarten-aged kids is even harder. They’re learn-as-you-go jobs, but they can be rewarding and fun. In their own ways, these kids appreciate what we’re doing for them. Most of them want to play football, and if you do it right, some of them will be receptive to what you’re saying, some of the times. If you dress it up as a game, they’ll want to play the game their parents and siblings talk about so often.

I made tons of errors my first year, learned from them my second year, and 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 have no level of expertise, and those with more experience coaching kids might correct everything I write here. I will also use the term “tackle” throughout this article to describe the act of pulling a flag, as this discussion focuses on flag football.

Lower Your Expectations before you step on the field. In the beginning, I thought if I had high expectations of myself that might translate to them developing high expectations. My oldest child was a kindergarten-aged child, so I had elevated expectations of the team…in the beginning. People with multiple children learn to lower their expectations of kindergarten-aged children, but I didn’t have that luxury. If you walk in with high expectations, you’ll learn, and you’ll probably look back and realize how foolish it was for you to have high expectations of kindergarten-aged children. The best mindset to have is one of lowered expectations. By doing so, you’ll be surprised by everything they do correctly, and they’ll hear that surprise in your voice.
Be a Coach with a Plan, then prepare to edit, revise, and completely scrap everything you planned for the season. I walked in with a plan, and after the first game, I revised it down to a few bullet points, or talking points, that I wanted the team members 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 stick, your season will be a success. Accomplishing this, of course, requires repetition. My advice is to watch some YouTube videos on “coaching kindergarten flag football”. Some of these videos provide some very helpful hints, talking points, and 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#3:
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 those teams 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.
Keep your practices simple, active, and highly participatory. Some leagues suggest one mid-week practice. I followed that suggestion in week one, and I immediately abandoned that idea and focused on the practice that was allowed 20 minutes before each game. 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 6-to-7 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 allow any of them to stand idle. Focus on group activities. If there are some individual drills you think you need to run, develop an activity for those standing in line waiting for their turn to arrive. (Some examples are jumping jacks and other forms of running in place. Whatever we do, we want to keep them moving.) My advice is to avoid any individual drills however. 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 switch, so they’re not doing the same thing too often, then finish those drills with a scrimmage. Kids will also run around and pull each others’ flags off. A rule we incorporated was, if you pull someone’s flag, while playing around, you have to put it back on. (Kids don’t enjoy doing that for some reason, as it almost undermines their reason for doing it in the first place.
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. Just run and this will give us a chance to see how fast you are.” Most kids want to flash the abilities and accomplish their dream 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 chance, 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, because you’re so fast.” Another reason for this bullet point is that once a kindergarten-aged child starts juking they never stop. This can result in 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, you have to use two hands and two eyes to look the ball in.” We said this so often that the kids would repeat it whenever they dropped the ball. We instituted this rule to try to prevent them from running before they caught the ball. (Once they secure the catch, we told them to run, but the actual catch happened so infrequently that we were able to get away with only preaching those first two steps for most of the season.)
Side Integrity. On defense, we taught 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 lined our outside defenders outside the furthest player on the other team, and we stressed that they not let the runner outside of them, even if they didn’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.) Spinning is also better than juking, because it’s quick. “Even if you don’t make the tackle,” we tell them, “You need to push the runner inside to the rest of your teammates.” We practiced this drill so often that a couple of them accomplished it a couple of times. I considered that a SUCCESS!
Safety. We established the position of Safety as the most important position on the defense. The Safety is the defender that is at the back of the defense. The Safety should be the final defender that the offense has to get past. The Safety was the equivalent to the quarterback on defense in our kindergarten system. I made the mistake of telling the team how important the Safety position was in our system, and I write the word mistake because once I said it, every kid wanted to play Safety on our team. After the fourth kid asked me if he could play Safety for about the fourth time, I channeled that into a reward, “Whoever made the last tackle on the last play gets to play Safety on the next play. Everyone wanted to be safety, so they strove to make the tackle. (I had no idea this would be a motivator, but I learned as I went.)
Sharks and Minnows. When you’re done with the repetitious drills, in practice, it’s vital to developing interest, and team building that we make practice fun. We played a game, suggested on YouTube, called Sharks and Minnows. This was different from the more traditional version in the sense that we put up cones for boundaries, and the five minnows attempted to avoid the two sharks for as long as they could, while staying within the boundaries. The minnows begin by chanting, “fishy fishy come out and play,” and the sharks reply, when they’re ready, “SHARK ATTACK!” At that point, the two sharks in the middle attempt to pull as many flags off the minnows as they can. When a shark “tackles” a minnow that minnow then becomes a shark, and they join the sharks in trying to tackle the other minnows remaining, until there are only two minnows left. Those two minnows become the two sharks to start the next game. 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 my first season, I flirted with the notion of plays. I drew up about seven plays that I considered simple. After the first game, I pared it down to three plays, a reverse, a running play, and a passing play. By the third game, we were about 90% run plays, and 9% pass plays, with one reverse thrown in. The more plays you throw in, the more questions you invite, and questions equals chaos. Handing the ball off on every play doesn’t teach kids the fundamentals of the game very well, but when you teach them to block (more on that later) you end up teaching them a team concept better. 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. 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. (They had a play clock in our league. I understand the need to keep things moving to prevent the kids from getting bored, but trying to corral 6-7 kindergarten-aged kids in thirty seconds could prove stressful at times.)
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 tooth.” (These statements aren’t reserved for huddles, as we learned some of this information while a play was in progress.) In the huddle, we often hear, “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.)
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 accordingly. 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 game. Person A runs down the field, person B pulls their flag, and the play is over. To the kindergarten mind, however, 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 experience such a display, it might be better to simply move on and let their 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 provided the disappointed kids who didn’t succeed on a play was to have a short-term memory. “Do it again. See if you can do it on your next turn.” We preached this ‘next play’ philosophy so often that the kids sarcastically mocked us for saying it too often. We said things like, “Try your hardest on every play, but if you don’t succeed, do it on the ‘next play’.” Also, if they gained any yards, focus on that with them. “You just gained 12 yards on that play, and you’ve now gained 64 yards in the game so far.” (In their post game interview with their parents, I heard kids say that they gained 64 yards in that game.) This coping method requires repetition, and I developed this short-term mindset after years of playing recreational sports. It worked well for me, but it can be difficult for disappointed, kindergarten minds to comprehend. Some of them couldn’t be soothed, as all they knew was they get tackled.
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. Two seasons of kindergarten coaching have taught me to only attempt 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 helps them maintain enthusiasm and 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.
Team play. The best way to teach them one of the most vital components of sports, team play, is to teach them that they have to play their role on every given play. If the play calls for a handoff to Joey, make sure Tommy knows to block. Tommy might forget to block on a given play, and if he does, remind him that that’s the best way for Joey to score a touchdown. Tommy might not care if Joey scores, but we need to remind Tommy that if he wants to score a touchdown on his next turn, he will need to have Joey block for him. If you don’t block for Joey, he might not block for you, and you might not score a touchdown on your play. “Block for them when it’s their turn, and they’ll block for you when it’s yours,” was what we told them. Also, make sure to yell out, “Nice block Tommy!” when they accomplish a block. When Joey comes back, exhausted and satisfied with a quality touchdown, I always said, “Good job Joey, but it wouldn’t have happened without Tommy’s key block. Good job Tommy!”
If you don’t know it now, you’ll learn it as you go, kindergarten-aged children learn through repetition. “Two eyes, two hands.” “Do it again. See if you can do it on the next play.” “One voice in the huddle,” “You have to go get touchdowns, when it’s your turn.” No juking, and side integrity are examples of things I repeated throughout our two seasons together. I also preached “Lower your expectations,” “Keep it simple,” and “Winning and losing is for the kids to talk about, not you.” After compiling my game plan and developing high expectations in the beginning, I learned to break it all down to these quotes. It kept our practices and games structured, and it helped me maintain sanity throughout.
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-aged 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 6-7 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.