A Small Town Gave Up Tackle Football. It Came Storming Back.

There was another reason for restoring the program: Some parents felt young players were less prepared when they joined the eighth-grade team — an important feeder for the high school squad — because they were not as practiced at hitting.

“You can have a kid now, if he doesn’t get hit until eighth grade, it could ruin him,” said Spencer Taylor, whose sons, Raijon, 12, and Spencer II, 14, have played for about six years.

In Marshall, residents extol what they see as football’s virtues: the discipline and hard work of players who start practicing in the stifling summer heat. They also appreciate the way coaches, through tough love, teach accountability.

But more and more, those values have been challenged.

On visits to Marshall since 2014, I have witnessed how residents, coaches and educators have questioned the safety of a sport they cannot imagine living without and seen how their neighbors have fought to save it, even the seventh grade team, the youngest scholastic tackle team.

There are naysayers, like Harris. And some football parents have nudged their boys into soccer, baseball or basketball instead.

Yet many residents here remain committed to football. The sport helps shape the identity of their city even as the makeup of football rosters has shifted under their feet. Football in Marshall, as it is across America, is increasingly dominated by black players, whose families are generally poorer and prioritize the opportunities for college scholarships that the sport provides.

Source: The New York Times

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