A deep-sea of red flooded Quince Orchard High School every fall Friday before the coronavirus pandemic, with students and staff alike sporting their colors, red and black. During lunch on Fridays, hundreds of students wait in line with their friends to purchase tickets early for the football game that will occur later that evening.
The atmosphere on Fridays is exciting for everybody in the Quince Orchard community, but it is even more exhilarating for the football players themselves. They were devastated, to say the least, when the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic hit, bringing their upcoming season to a halt.
Quince Orchard senior Alex Schrier and junior Carter Taggart, both members of the varsity football team, tried their best to not let the pandemic bring them down. Instead of letting their postponed season stop them, they used their newly found downtime as motivation and started a clinic called Pee-Wee Playmakers. During this clinic, they have taught football to a group of six elementary school students in their neighborhood nearly every week since September.
“What I would normally be doing on Friday nights is playing football, but this way I can teach football to little kids and play games, and it’s really fun,” Schrier said.
There are a lot of young boys on Schrier’s block who are interested in football, and one of their mothers was the one that originally proposed the idea to start Pee-Wee Playmakers. She knew that her sons and their friends wanted to learn how to play football and thought that it would be an amazing opportunity for them to learn from current varsity football players. Schrier agreed and got Taggart, who he had been playing football with since they were in a youth league together, to be on board too. The idea came into effect quickly after that, with the clinic starting around two weeks later.
Competitive football players usually have a set position that they play and focus on while they are training. However, with Pee-Wee Playmakers, Schrier and Taggart teach the kids the basics for all of the positions.
“We don’t know what they’re going to look like when they are 16 or 17. We don’t know what they’re going to want to play, or what their interests are going to be. We just try to teach a, ‘do your job’ mentality, because that’s what QO does,” Taggart said.
A lot of the skills that Schrier and Taggart teach the kids are ones that they have acquired during their own high school practices.
“We kind of copy the drills that we do,” Schrier said. “For example, we do a drill called the Ball Security Drill, where we make sure that the players are holding the ball properly. I’ve learned that from doing running drills in high school.”
For the most part, working with the kids has been a rewarding experience, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailings. Some days, the kids would want to play games when Schrier and Taggart try to teach them something new. In the end, however, Schrier, Taggart and the kids all have a common level of respect for each other. The kids look up to Schrier and Taggart and try their best to listen to any suggestions that they are given by them.
“I encourage them when they do something right, rather than degrade them when they do something wrong,” Taggart added.
Most importantly, however, these kids have been able to have fun while improving immensely since the clinic first began.
“They’ve developed really well. I mean they are really, really good now,” Schrier said. “One of the most satisfying things was when last week, one of the kids said, ‘I definitely progressed today.’ That’s a really nice thing to hear because he’s saying that he notices that he got better.”
Not only have the kids been able to learn from Pee-Wee Playmakers, but Schrier and Taggart have as well.
“Being a coach, you become more aware of what you are doing on the field when you play,” Taggart said. “If our coaches hear us coaching up our teammates on the field, or making individual adjustments, they will definitely appreciate it, because it is going to, overall, make the program better. If we’re pushing our teammates and we’re pushing ourselves, everyone is going to get better.”
Article by Hailey Baker of Quince Orchard High School
Photo courtesy of Pee-Wee Playmakers