300-pounder barred from Texas pee wee

Maybe everything IS bigger in Texas.

http://espn.go.com/dallas/story/_/id/8274444/report-texas-pee-wee-football-league-bars-300-pound-player

 

Not unheard of. The third-through-sixth grade YMCA league in my neck of the woods has a weight limit. I think it's 200 pounds. There's another league with no weight limit that siphons off a lot of players, too.
At that age, it's both a safety and a competitive issue.

 

The bigger issue is why is a 12-year old weighing 300 pounds. And this is coming from a fat guy.

 

The kid in question, for the record:

 

His team only uses 3 linemen

 

The league's rule is that any seventh-grader weighing more than 135 pounds is barred and must play in his school's league, according to the report.

"I don't want to play in school right now because it's people that's had experience and I want to get some experience first and then start playing," Elijah Earnhardt told the website. "I just want to play because my teammates are my friends -- I know them. I don't want to go play for somebody else I don't know."

So there's a place he can go play against other seventh-graders -- where he will still enjoy an enormous size advantage -- but he's too scared to do that and would rather be able to sit on kids a third of his size.

Yeah, he's a prospect.

 

Must be a genetic thing. Just look at mama:


EDIT: Yes, a six ... and then some.

 

"For him to come home and just cry and go to his room and say, 'I give up,' I'm not going to let him give up," she said. "This is his dream. This is what he wants to do. And I'm going to make it happen."

1. Have you ever seen a grown man cr- er, em, never mind. Not a grown man after all.

2. It's his dream to squash kids that go up to his knees? I thought that was called a bully.

 

genetic, meaning she eats way too much and shows him how to do the same.
have to agree with Batman, don't most leagues have weight limits. i have a buddy who
had to play soccer 5th-8th grade because he was too heavy. and he's nowhere near the size of this kid. as a freshman he was 5'9 210.

 

One of my best friends was 6-2, 200 in 7th grade, and he was like "Clark Kent" on the football team.

Clark: "I mean, every time I get the ball, I can make a touchdown. Every time."

Problem was, most of the other teams had one of those guys too.

I think there was an informal agreement after a couple games you could only run these guys one series or something.

I think the next year when I was in 8th grade they put in a 150-pound limit for skill positions and 200 pounds overall.

My buddy had to cut weight (a little bit). By this time they had switched him to tackle, where he kicked ass.

You can't have 300-pounders playing against kids who are 5-2, 90 pounds.

 

Totally agreed! We were talking about this story in the office earlier in the day and agreed, there's kids like this in just about every town they have youth tackle football. This one just happened to have a mom who made enough of a fuss with some local media outlet that AP felt obliged to follow. Either that or it's a Texas thing.

 

"Mesquite Pee Wee Football Association president Ronnie Henderson told the website that he sympathizes with Earnhardt but maintained that they must adhere to the league's rule.

'"The coach over there should have known this," Henderson said. "He's been told this. He's been to our meetings. He knows this. I don't know where the misunderstanding was. We hate it. I don't like it for the kid or the parents."'

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What do you think he meant by "We hate it. I don't like it for the kid or the parents"?

Is it the "misunderstanding" he hates? The rule itself? The heavy kid? The mom? The fact others have been allowed, with designation, to break the rule (and oh, how how heavy are those kids? 138? 142?)?

For the record, I doubt there was a "misunderstanding." Just a big kid who doesn't want to play with the other big boys.