Son wants to join football team midway through season eli.cranor@gmail.com October 10, 2021 Eli Cranor is a former professional quarterback and coach turned award-winning author. Please use the “Contact” page at elicranor.com to send in questions for “Athletic Support.”

Dear Athletic Support: We kept my son out of 7th grade football at the start of this year. Think back to August. You remember what was happening, don’t you? COVID everywhere. The Delta variant. Yeah. We weren’t about to let him play a full-contact sport in the middle of all that mess. But now things have calmed down. Cases are falling across the state. And my son still wants to play football. I know we’re already about halfway through the season, but I would hate for him to miss this opportunity just because we were trying to protect him. What would be the best way for us to handle this? Should my son go to the coach himself? Should I try and schedule a meeting? With half of the season gone already, is there any chance at all the coach will let my son join the team? I sure hope so.

— Let Him Play

Dear Play: Under normal circumstances, I would say there’s no way a coach would let a player join the team halfway through the season unless they just moved to town.

Actually, now that I type that, I know that’s not completely true. I know there are a lot of coaches out there who would let a player join the team halfway through the season if he happened to be really, really good.

Like, say, some star basketball stud who decides he wants to come catch touchdown passes. Yeah. Most coaches are going to have trouble turning him away.

The problem, though, are all the other boys who put in the time and the effort and the sweat. The ones who were there all summer. Attended every workout. The camps. The practices before the start of school.

What sort of message would a coach send to his players if he just let a kid join up midway through the season? What sort of precedent would that set?

It might open up the floodgates. It might give boys the idea that they can skip all the hard stuff and join up right before Homecoming.

Who knows? But I bet it wouldn’t be good.

Your case, however, is different. Everything is different these days because we’re still dealing with a global pandemic.

So here’s what I’d do: I’d let your son go talk to his coach first. That’s always the best first step. You want to use this as a chance for your son to learn something, and he can learn how to speak to an adult if he’s the one who approaches the coach.

If the coach won’t budge — or that talk just doesn’t go well — then you can set up a meeting. Remind this coach that these are special circumstances and trying times. We could all use a little help!


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• Are athletes getting better with age?
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• Removal of mask requirement could cost us games
• Overachieving daughter stinks at sports
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• Freshmen don’t make varsity, usually
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Outside of athletics, kids’ brains are also at risk. Who knows what sort of impact virtual learning will have on their cognition and critical thinking skills. In this regard, I offer one simple tool — a good book! And luckily, I know just the book for kids struggling with the shift to virtual learning:

BOOKS MAKE BRAINZ TASTE BAD! Okay, you caught me… I’m the author of this book. It was published last week and awarded a #1 New Release ranking on Amazon. BMBTB deals directly with the same topic covered in this column, except in a much more lighthearted, kid-friendly way (zombie teachers and brain-munching screens!) If you end up purchasing this book for your children or grandchildren, I only have one final suggestion — ask them to read it while standing up! Eli Cranor's new book Books Make Brainz Taste Bad has just been released. ZOMBIES HATE BOOKS! Especially the zombie teachers at Haven Middle School. That's why they're using VR headsets to fry kids' brainz. Luckily, Dash Storey knows how to save his classmates from the zombie teachers—BOOKS! They make brainz taste bad! "Eli Cranor has an almost unbeatable advantage. He can remember how it felt to think like a twelve-year-old and he can see the very same events like the adult he is. Don't try to resist this book!" - Jack Butler, Pulitzer-Prize nominated author