Bullying

Playing football, basketball, and baseball growing up I felt like I saw almost every type of bullying from coaches, players, and fans. But I feel like playing football growing up in junior and high school around me they did not ever cut kids from the teams, so everyone was allowed to play if they followed the schools and teams’ rules. I remember kids would be on the team to obviously get in some extra activates so they could be more of an active kid and didn’t play because they loved football, but rather to just be there and have some fun. In high school I remember the locker rooms for football the freshman kids that were so little would get hazed to the point of embarrassment. This kid was really brutally verbally and physically abused because he always had something to say back to kids that would say very mean things to him and once we were on the field he would play with the running backs and safeties he would get targeted and hit really hard just for the fun of it. The power was the upper class man, because whenever I lined up with the varsity and the sophomore team would come over the varsity would find this kid and just go right for him with no regard. The kids’ power was taken away from him because he played all the way from grade school and never quit, because of his dad would push him and push him to keep coming. By the time our sophomore year was up he was mentally and physically done with football. It wasn’t just football he dropped out of high school, moved out of his parents’ house and Peoria, IL, and moved to some small town in Illinois to get away from everything that he grew up around. I felt so bad because even though I wasn’t the cause I knew that I was there and did nothing to stop coaches or other players to stop or lay back on him. The imbalance of this is that growing up I didn’t know how messed up this was to do to kids and seeing it I always kept my mouth shut because I was a shy kid and wanted to play football and learn. It existed because coaches want to get the weakness out of a team, coaching in football is a mental game some coaches believe if they can break a kid than those fans and the game will break him. So, most coaches enjoy to just yell at kids till they are satisfied with the effort, either if it’s a play, conditioning, etc. This existed because no one was able to step up not even his parents, I believe his dad said one thing over about 8 years of football and those were all different coaches for him not one being the same. This cycle continued and still continues today with how coaches want to treat their players. Like I said I probably could have done something about it definitely in high school, but I was always in a tough spot when I wasn’t as shy. I was always really close to starting on varsity and never wanted to jeopardize that by standing up to the coaches, because of how mean they were to kids and single handily that kid alone. I feel bad to this day, because I haven’t heard from the kid when he left high school sophomore year, I could have put myself in a leadership role to stand up but was set on my own goals that I wanted to make happen in my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8kYsGUIVMY