A short story by Miriam Stone
There was once a football team and this is the story of how they changed one boy’s life.
Keith was a boy with several developmental disabilities. No one knew how he even got on the Middle School’s football team. The players were convinced that it was to meet a state quota, a convenient way for the school to squeeze through a technicality. They were not a compassionate group.
As a matter of fact, there were reasons that they resented Keith’s place on the team. There were good players out there who couldn’t get on the team because Keith took up a valuable space, and not only didn’t he help the team, he slowed them down. After all, football isn’t just a sport. It is the sport and even though this was only Middle School and the boys were only ten and eleven years old, they understood that winning was everything.
It would pave the way for them to play ball in the higher grades and if they were good enough, a college scholarship was not out of the question. Far more important, football made them popular and that was the real game they were playing, the popularity game.
Beyond even that, Keith was annoying. He annoyed everyone who knew him and the football players were more than annoyed. As they saw it, Keith was dumped on them and if they couldn’t argue with the school higher-ups who put him there, they could make life as miserable as possible for Keith – and they did. Keith became a target for the football team to attack, and as the football team goes, so goes the school.
It was the last game of the season. Parents cheered from the stands, the coach was a live wire ready to spring at any moment. Hopes were high. This team was good, even with the liability of Keith.
What happened next infuriated those in the stands and the coach really did spring. The team refused to score a goal. They got close, so close in fact that the young player with the ball had to slide and skid to a halt just before he crossed the goal line.
The players had a plan so secret that they did not share it with their coach, their parents or their friends. Everyone was so fixed on the ball that they didn’t see what the rest of the team was up to. They kept moving Keith closer and closer to the goal line. As Keith got closer, the rest of the team worked to get the ball. Everything fell into place beautifully. As soon as the players got the ball and ran it to the goal line, they gave it to Keith. He crossed the line and scored a touchdown.
Finally, everyone got it. The crowd cheered, Keith’s parents cried with happiness and Keith, well he was just about out of his mind with pride and happiness.
The team didn’t stop there. They welcomed him to their table at lunch and “as the team goes, so goes the school”.
Some of the team were interviewed afterward and they all said that it was worth it just to see Keith feel so happy. One of the team members was interviewed and he said that he didn’t make up the plan. He just went along with it. The interviewer asked the player if he felt that he had learned anything from this. The player said that before he did this, all he cared about was himself and his friends. But, he now understood that it is equally important to make someone happy. Doing that also makes you feel happy and good.
These ten and eleven year old boys made a secret plan and pulled it off, all to make someone else feel successful.
There is so much bullying going on in our schools today. We wonder what happened to our children It is so refreshing to see some light shine in a very dark valley.
