Youth Athletes, Again, Take A Knee During National Anthem

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - SEPTEMBER 24: Members of the Indianapolis Colts stand and kneel for the national anthem prior to the start of the game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Cleveland Browns at Lucas Oil Stadium on September 24, 2017 in Indianapolis. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

If you're offended by the sight of athletes kneeling during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," you might want to avoid more than the NFL -- you might also want to miss high school and youth league games.

Members of the girls soccer team at Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine kneeled during the U.S. national anthem before their match the afternoon after a Sunday filled with NFL players who went down on one knee and/or locked arms -- with some team owners joining in -- following President Donald Trump's Sept. 24 speech in which he veered off the topic of Senate candidate Luther Strange to declare that if any pro football player took a knee during the anthem, he was a "son of a bitch" whom his owner should fire.

The imagery of a president who said there were "very fine people" at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in which a woman was killed by a rallier, then using an obscenity at black football players who peacefully protest about police brutality and racial inequality (which is how this started with Colin Kaepernick in 2016), was not lost on a league where 70 percent of players are African-American. Nor was the imagery of bringing up that these players have "owners." And the owners, and many others in the NFL who had supported Trump, were suddenly ready to take a knee after they became the latest group of white people shocked that the president was not confining his venom only to non-white, non-Christian people and the things they love.

So the news is dominated by images and discussion of players kneeling during the anthem, which I actually find a legitimate use of time, despite the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean following hurricanes, the devastation from Mexican earthquakes, and impending nuclear doom with North Korea. To paraphrase Washington's Josh Norman said after his Sunday night game, Trump has put this question behind Kaepernick's protest into its sharpest focus: who gets to be an American, with all rights and privileges? (Certainly Puerto Rico has to be wondering whether its president isn't thinking it's American enough to warrant an urgent response to its devastation.)

As Trump has done with so many things, he's turned a simple, powerful protest about race played out during the anthem -- a short statement in full view, not interrupting anyone but something you can't ignore -- into something all about him. And as such, Trump has turned something that was a burning ember -- Kaepernick, basically blackballed from the NFL over his protests, isn't talking about them any more in favor of his own charitable works -- into a raging fire. Trump has put any athlete and fan in the position that what you do during the national anthem, or what you think of what people do during the anthem, says everything about you.

Or, whether you visit the White House after your team wins a title.

Which is why high schools and youth leagues are wringing their hands, waiting for what happens in games this upcoming weekend, particularly in football. For example, the state high school athletic associations in Minnesota and Louisiana have already advised schools it's up to them on how to handle possible protests, which are legal.

Besides the Traip Academy kneeldown, the high school band that played the anthem before Monday night's Oakland A's baseball game took a knee -- the A's being the team with the first player in baseball take a knee during the anthem. Bruce Maxwell did that the night of Trump's NFL speech. Many school teams took a knee in 2016 when Kaepernick was active, and there's expectations it'll happen again.

Lest you think this is an easy and popular thing to do, a high school football player who is a Texas A&M recruit announced on Twitter he would take a knee, but changed his mind for reasons he didn't state. I don't doubt it might have something to do with the vitriolic comments he got from actual grown people who had nothing better to do than attack a teenager online.

Orlando "Doc" Gooden isn't sure, but his Cahokia, Ill., youth team's taking a knee Sept. 17 -- before Trump's NFL rant -- might be the reason he's suspended this weekend from coaching his team. (He wasn't told a reason, and Tri-County Football, his league, didn't respond to emails seeking comment.) Gooden and his team got worldwide attention for their protest, no small reason being the players involved, protesting following the acquittal of a white former St. Louis cop for shooting and killing a black man, were 7 and 8 years old.

Gooden, who says he's never been overtly political, says the idea grew out of conversations that started when one of the kids mentioned the case, and that when the kids learned about Kaepernick, they wanted to kneel. Gooden's wife took a video and posted it to Facebook, and the reaction reached the peak for this sort of thing: shaming by Fox News.

Gooden said in an interview that if he knew how much attention his team's action had gotten, they might not have done it. On the other hand, he says what his team did -- and, I'll add, what can happen with other teams' protests -- can start a dialogue that might not foster agreement, but can foster understanding, even if the chatting starts as angry responses on your wife's Facebook page.

"I can’ t control how a person feels. I can only tell them my intentions," Gooden said. For example, he says in their conversations leading up to the decision to take a knee, he talked to the kids not only about how police and the military can be positive, but that they are positions to which the kids can and should aspire.

"I respect that people don’t feel the same way I feel about certain things. After talking to people who were disgruntled, who don’t like the fact you knelt, and don’ t understand where you were coming from, I saw a lot of growth in humanity. People came into conversations nasty, but once they got into conversations, they would agree to disagree. We left the conversation with some new Facebook friends."

If you're losing your mind over seeing your local high school football or soccer team kneel during the anthem, I would suggest this: take a minute, breath, and talk to somebody about why they're doing what they're doing. That's a much more constructive way of handling this protest than swearing at people and demanding punishment. Certainly, that technique is already proven to work extremely poorly if the goal is stopping the protests.

A youth sports blog written by Bob Cook. He's contributed to, or, if you prefer. He’s delivered sports commentaries for All Things Considered. Fo...