Metro Pulse/Gamut/Youth football

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A look inside Knox County's thriving kid football subculture

by Bill Carey

Forget the Titans; forget the Volunteers; heck, forget the Farragut Admirals. The great American showdown about to take place is between the mighty Gibbs Eagles and the upstart Northwest Rebels.

The players are so young that some of the smaller ones look like they are having a hard time holding up under the weight of their shoulder pads and helmets. But don't tell this to Gibbs head coach Eddie Jones and his staff of three assistants, who are squared away in their Gibbs Youth Athletic Association V-necks and matching ball caps. They are doing everything they can to convince their team that this game is the beginning of the rest of their lives. "Put your game faces on, boys!" Jones barks out repeatedly, with all the emotion of a championship wrestler playing up to the crowd. "This is for real! Let's get out our goulash!"

The Gibbs team, wearing helmets, light blue jerseys, and dark pants, runs through their pre-game warm-ups with the organization of any college team. After doing stretching exercises in unison, it's time to run through a few plays. Starting quarterback Zack Batts barks out signals with as loud and deep a voice as a nine-year-old boy can muster. With each snap, the Gibbs offensive line charges out of position with an intimidating grunt, and Batts hands the ball off to one of his running backs, who puts the ball under his arm and runs around the end as fast as he can. "Remember, this team is for real!" Jones says. "They beat Fulton last week, and they're coming after us this week!"

What neither Jones nor any of his players are aware of is that the great American showdown might become the great American forfeit. While Coach Jones is warning his team about Northwest's tendency to run a reverse to number 80, Northwest head coach Sam Butler is on the other side of the concession stand in a state of consternation. "We don't have enough players yet," Butler says, nervously glancing in the direction of the parking lot. Only about nine boys have shown up so far—some of the others have become casualties of a stomach virus, bad grades, or parents who just didn't want to come on this particular night. His players are scattered in a small grassy area in varying degrees of readiness. Three of them are wearing every part of their equipment and look like they are ready to play. Others are playing, wrestling, talking to friends, or just wandering off in the desultory way that only children can perfect. Northwest's players range in size from 57-pound Scotty Henderson to 205 pound Isaac Mobley, a boy so big for his age that a grown man might have a hard time blowing him off the line.

Finally, nineteen minutes before kickoff, Northwest's eleventh player comes running up. Butler and his two assistants began getting their team lined up for the mandatory pre-game weigh-in. The game is on.

Despite the rising popularity of other sports such as soccer, little league football is bigger than ever here. Knox County has 3,200 little league football players and 2,500 little league cheerleaders. The city and county recreation departments jointly preside over a system that has 131 teams in eight age brackets, from the "grasshopper" league (seven-year-olds) to the "super midget" league (14-year-olds).

Games take place on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights at John Tarleton Park. The park has five fields, and there is a different game on each field at 6, 7, and 8 p.m. With all the players, all the cheerleaders, and all the parents coming and going, finding a place to park is formidable, and the scene quite confusing. Everywhere are teams and cheerleading squads in various stages of activity, kids playing in the dirt or begging their parents to buy them a Coke, parents trying to round up their children or trying to find the right field. It is an interesting and comforting slice of Americana. And it climaxes with a series of Little League championships that take place this year on Saturday, Nov. 11.

The way Knox County has the league organized, most kids play for teams named for schools in their areas (one exception to this is the Central City Youth Sports Program, a heavily-subsidized inner-city association where the teams have uniforms modeled after the NFL's Oakland Raiders). The nine-year-old league has two divisions with five teams each. Tonight's game between Gibbs and Northwest is in the Grasscutter NFC division.

Watching the contest between Gibbs and Northwest, it's hard not to root for Northwest. With the teams on the field, Gibbs still has over a dozen players left on the bench; Northwest, meanwhile, has one spare player sharing the sideline with its three coaches. As one might expect, things start off badly for the Rebels. On about the fifth play of the game, Batts hands the ball to number 42 Chris Legg, who takes the ball through the line, cuts to the right, then to the left, and goes all the way for a touchdown. It's the beginning of a long game for Northwest (well, as long as a game can be in which there are four eight minute quarters and the clock never stops). By halftime, the game is 14-0, and Northwest quarterback Michael Butler (the coach's son, by the way) is taking a beating. "Dadgum it," one of Northwest's assistants says to the team at halftime. "Some of you guys look like you're afraid to hit these guys. Let's do it. Let's put some hurt in 'em and show 'em we're not afraid."

The wheels come off completely when Northwest gets the ball to start the third quarter. Every time the center snaps the ball, at least one member of the Gibbs' defensive line charges right through the line as if there is no one there to stop him. The Rebel offensive line looks like, well, a group of kids who don't know how to block. It's pretty obvious that some of Northwest's no-shows are guards and tackles.

Fortunately for Northwest's fans, there are actually two contests between Gibbs and Northwest going on. And while Gibbs might be winning the football game, Mary Roberts is determined that they won't win the cheerleading contest. Roberts, a small brunette who cheered at Bearden High School in the early 1980s, directs a cheerleading squad that actually has more members than the football team. And under the direction of Roberts, who sits cross-legged in front of her squad with a look of intensity reminiscent of Pat Head Summit in March, Northwest's cheerleaders never stop making noise the whole time. "Firecracker, firecracker, boom, boom, boom," goes one cheer that Roberts is especially proud of because she customized it. "The boys got the helmets; the coaches got the brain; the girls got the pom-poms; and we've got the game." The cheers have little connection to the actual events on the field; this is not so much about inspiring the players as it is about doing something fun in its own right. Roberts dismisses a question about whether her squad gets upset if the team loses. "No," she says. "We're used to it."

About midway through the fourth quarter, with the score still 14-0, the battle between Gibbs' cheerleaders and Northwest's cheerleaders gets interesting. Gibbs' squad comes out with their version of one of the most recognizable cheers around. "We're number one! Can't be number two! We're gonna beat the whoopee out of you!" With the word "whoopee," the girls turn their backs to the Northwest squad in unison, raise their dresses and bend over slightly, exposing their hug-me-tights to the opposition. This really gets Roberts' goat. "I can't believe she's got those nine-year-olds doing that," Roberts says, referring to her counterpart sitting about 40 feet away in front of the Gibbs' cheering squad. As soon as Gibbs' cheerleaders have finished the routine, Roberts has her girls do a more modest version of it. "We're number on! Can't be number two! Because we are the RED, WHITE, and BLUE!" After the cheer has concluded, Roberts gets a bit of a smug look on her face. Win or lose on the field, her girls have won the cheerleading battle, at least in her mind, because her squad has too much class to do "that whoopee thing." But it's not time to relax yet. A few seconds later, her cheerleading daughter pleads, "Mom, please can we go to the concession stand now?" Roberts shakes her head. "No way! Not with two minutes left. It's time for 'We've got spirit yes we do!'"

The game mercifully ends with the score still 14-0. About the best thing you can say about Northwest on this night is that they played the game and that they didn't quit, which is quite an accomplishment for a dozen young boys who all have to play both ways. The Gibbs Eagles run onto the field to shake hands with the other team and then the players hurry off to the sideline, hit a knee, and wait for their post-game pep talk. "You played well, but not as well as you could have played," says Coach Jones, who appears to finally be losing the intensity that he's had since he got to John Tarleton Park over two hours ago. "We tried to play everyone tonight, but we've got a lot of work to do until the next game. So let's get to it on Monday."

Northwest Coach Sam Butler has a few gripes to go over with the referees, so it takes him a while until he joins his team on the opposite side of the field. By the time he gets there, about half of them have begun to take their shoulder pads off; one or two of the players are trying to hide the fact that they are about to cry. "Let's start from scratch on Monday," Coach Butler says when he gets there. "Maybe we had an off night. We'll be working on offense. And we'll find something that works this time."