How Woodrow Wilson High School Built a Fair Football Program (And What Parents Can Learn)
Last August, I leaned against the dented hood of my minivan in the Woodrow Wilson High School parking lot, watching two groups of players haul tackling dummies across the sunbaked practice field, and heard the same complaint I’d listened to every fall for three years. “Why do the coach’s kids get to run receiver when my boy’s got better hands?” a dad next to me muttered, sipping burnt gas station coffee. “Same thing happened to my nephew last year. He quit before the first game.”
Under the old head coach, who’d run the program for 18 years, unwritten rules were just how things worked. Returning varsity never had to set up or tear down practice; that work fell entirely to freshmen and JV. Parents who donated $1,000 or more to the booster club saw their kids get more playing time, even when their stats lagged behind quieter players. The $325 optional summer camp was billed as “extra work for dedicated kids,” but everyone knew camp attendees got first dibs on starting spots. My son Milo, a lineman who showed up to every free off-season workout, got 32 seconds of playing time the entire 2022 season. The starting left guard, whose dad owned the local car dealership and was tight with the coach, missed four workouts for family beach trips. Milo came home after the last game, tossed his muddy mouthguard in the bathroom sink, and said, “What’s the point of showing up if it doesn’t count?”
That changed this year, when the old coach retired and 32-year-old JV assistant Eric Hale took over. He didn’t give a rah-rah speech at the first parent meeting or hand out a glossy 20-page playbook. He passed around half-sheets of copy paper, typed in plain 12-point font, with five ground rules. Tryout drills would be scored blind for the first three days, with players wearing numbered pinnies over their name jerseys so coaches couldn’t favor returning players. Starting spots would be 60% skill and drill performance, 40% contribution points for attendance, helping teammates, keeping grades up, and taking care of equipment. Summer camp would be free for anyone who couldn’t pay, covered by local business sponsorships. Every player, regardless of grade or team, took one turn setting up and tearing down practice each week. Work, family, or medical conflicts could get pre-approved schedule adjustments with no penalty, no questions asked.
Javi Morales, a sophomore cornerback who clocked the fastest 40-yard dash at 2022 tryouts but quit halfway through the season because he couldn’t afford camp and needed more shifts at his family’s taco truck, came back this year. He works Tuesday and Thursday evenings, so he makes up his drills on Sunday afternoons, no points deducted. After the first pre-season scrimmage, he was named starting cornerback over Tyler Henderson, a senior who’d started three games the year before and whose dad sat on the booster club board.
Mr. Henderson found Coach Hale by the equipment shed after the scrimmage, his voice carrying across the whole parking lot. He yelled that Tyler had put three years into the program, and it was garbage to yank his spot for a kid who “couldn’t even be bothered to show up to summer camp.” Coach didn’t yell back. He wiped sweat off his forehead, pulled a beat-up three-ring binder from his truck, and flipped to the cornerback stats. I was close enough to see: Javi had allowed one catch in 12 coverage reps; Tyler had allowed seven. Javi had 14 extra contribution points from staying late to walk freshmen through footwork drills; Tyler had nine points deducted for missing two mandatory study halls and leaving his shoulder pads on the field twice. “Tyler’s a good kid,” Coach said, quiet enough you had to lean in to hear. “But a spot isn’t payment for years you already put in. It’s for the work you’re putting in now, and it wouldn’t be fair to Javi or the rest of the team to give it to him just because he’s a senior.”
Tyler was mad for a week. He skipped the first team pasta dinner and avoided talking to Javi in the locker room. But he didn’t quit. He started showing up 20 minutes early to practice to work on his backpedal, and by the third regular season game he’d earned a starting spot on kickoff coverage. Now he and Javi trade rides to practice when Javi’s mom can’t get off her nursing home shift early.
I work as a paraeducator in Wilson’s 10th grade support program, so I spend a lot of time around systems that look fair on paper but rarely play out that way for kids. For years, I thought being a fair teacher or coach meant staying flexible—cutting a break to the kid you know is going through a hard time, rewarding the kids who’ve stuck around the longest. What this football season made clear is that unwritten flexibility almost always benefits the kids who already have the most advantages. The kid whose parent can take time off work to come argue with the coach gets the extra break. The quiet kid who works 20 hours a week and doesn’t have a parent available to show up to meetings gets passed over. Most unfairness doesn’t come from people being cruel. It comes from making up rules as you go, and letting familiarity or status shift how you apply them.
After the first week of tryouts, I borrowed Coach Hale’s blind scoring trick for the first round of personal narrative grading I do with my support classes. I covered all student names with sticky notes before I read, sorting only by ID number. I was shocked how much my own unspoken assumptions shifted grades when I could see names: I’d always gone a little easier on the kid who raised their hand every day, a little harder on the kid who was regularly late because he had to drop his little sibling at middle school. After blind grading, grades shifted only slightly, but the number of kids who came to me after saying a grade didn’t feel right dropped by more than half. It took no extra time, just a pad of sticky notes.
I also copied the “write the small rules down first” rule at home, for Milo and my 11-year-old daughter Lila. Before, weekend screen time was a constant fight: I’d give Lila extra time if she’d been easygoing that week, cut Milo’s short if he forgot to take the trash out, and both yelled that calls were arbitrary. Now a half-sheet is taped to the fridge: two hours of recreational screen time if all weekly chores and homework are done. You can request an extra hour for a friend’s game or family movie, no questions, as long as you ask before Saturday morning. No last-minute changes based on my mood. The arguments stopped almost immediately.
This system isn’t perfect, and it hasn’t won everyone over. Three families transferred their kids to the private school across town before the first regular season game, saying the program “doesn’t value senior leadership.” Last month, Javi had to miss the final walk-through before our first playoff game because his mom got stuck with a last-minute shift and he had to stay with his little sister, who had a fever. He lost his starting spot per the attendance rule, and even I had to stop myself from pulling Coach aside to ask for an exception. Javi didn’t complain, though. He said he knew the rule when the season started, and he wouldn’t want another player to benched so he could get special treatment. He played 12 snaps on special teams that night and made one tackle.
Milo is still second string left guard. He probably won’t start next year, either, and he admits that stings sometimes. But he hasn’t mentioned quitting once this season, after talking about it constantly last fall. Last week he stayed an hour after practice to teach a freshman how to tape his wrists to avoid blisters, something no upperclassman ever did for him.
Last Friday was senior night, cold enough we could see our breath, and the whole crowd stood when the seniors ran through the banner. After the game, everyone stayed to stack equipment: freshmen carried tackling dummies, seniors coiled water hoses, no one snuck off to the parking lot early. I saw Mr. Henderson handing Gatorades to Javi and Tyler both, clapping them on the back.
We play our second playoff game next Saturday, and I don’t know if we’ll win. I don’t know if these rules will stick if Coach Hale takes a head coaching job closer to his hometown next year, or if the booster club will vote to roll some of them back. Fairness isn’t a trophy you win once and put on a shelf, it turns out. It’s just showing up every week, applying the same standard to everyone, and adjusting when something doesn’t work. For this group of kids, this fall, that’s been enough.
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