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Monday, August 27, 2007
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Photo by Richard Gwin
Eric Barkley, Lawrence police officer, coaches football for seventh-graders at Southwest Junior High. For the past 12 years, Lawrence police officers have volunteered to coach football for the kids so there could be a seventh-grade team for them to play on.
They’ve gone from putting handcuffs on criminals to practicing handoffs with seventh-graders.
“Remember, get in your three-point stance,” Lawrence Police Officer Eric Barkley shouted to a group of Southwest Junior High seventh-graders at a recent practice. “One guy is going to come at you. Fight him off.”
Barkley is one of a number of city police officers who volunteer coaching seventh-grade football, a program the Lawrence Police Department has undertaken for the past 12 years.
“We notice there are some kids at risk, especially seventh-graders transitioning from grade school into a junior high environment,” police Capt. David Cobb said. “Sometimes it’s nice to have somebody to help with some discipline, some coaching and mentoring, so to speak.”
Cobb and Douglas County District Court Judge Jean Shepherd realized the need for the program while watching their sons play youth football up to sixth grade, then sitting out a year until football starts again in eighth grade at junior high.
“It had always seemed to me there was this gap. We were losing kids in the seventh grade. That’s a pretty instrumental year for deciding which direction kids go,” said Shepherd, who handles the juvenile cases in district court.
From that, the idea for a seventh-grade league coached by Lawrence police officers was born. Now, more than a decade later, the program is thriving.
“It’s just truly an example of this community coming together,” Shepherd said.
Members of the Colts, Central Junior High School’s seventh-grade team, said they were just excited to have the opportunity to play.
“It’s fun,” 12-year-old William Thompson said. “It makes me so I’m not bored at home, and I just like playing football because it’s a fun sport.”
As for having police officers as their coaches, the young football players say they like it.
“I think it’s good to see them running around playing football with us, having a good time,” Central Junior High seventh-grader Kamil Williams said.
Cobb admitted his profession made for some interesting discussions on the first day of practice.
“Oh yeah, they all wanted to first see where my gun was,” he said, “and you don’t need that for practice.”
In addition to learning the fundamentals of football, the program allows players to see the officers in a different light.
“They only see you when things are bad,” Cobb said. “This way, they get to realize, hey, we’re real people, and we have some ability to deal with them on their level.”
Parents who have children involved in the seventh-grade football program see the officers as positive role models for the young boys.
“I think it’s great that they volunteer their time,” Amy Warren said as she watched her son Jacob, a seventh-grader at Southwest Junior High School, practice. “My son just said the other day how cool he thought it was seeing the officer in his uniform, so it’s been a positive influence on him.”
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