Op-Ed: Yard Duty Scores One for the Kids

A few mornings ago I attended an awards ceremony for my son. He received a trophy for outstanding performance on a soccer team.

You may think this is no big deal, but this is the one trophy that my son will keep and remember as long as he lives. 

My son is a second-grader at . This year we were blessed with a morning “yard duty” named Delia Bradley.  She is a 75-year-old grandmother who shows up every morning by 8:15 a.m. to supervise the children on the playground before school officially starts.  

As we all know, this is a very dangerous time of day.  Children, with endless amounts of energy being dropped off and left to find their way to their classroom without getting sidetracked, doing something dangerous, or getting into some kind of mischief.

Every day I picked my son up from school, all he could talk about was his soccer game … who’s team won, how far the ball was kicked, how hard his team worked, etc.  He could list the name of the kids on his team and rattle off stats and scores. The teams (the Ninjas and Sharks) were working toward “playoffs.”  

I was confused ... playoffs in intramural sports at school? At PE?

Actually he was playing these soccer games before school.

I had to go check this out. I walked him up one morning mid-October.  There at 8:10 a.m., at the back of the cafeteria door stood four 8-year-old boys waiting patiently.  “She’s coming, she’s coming!” they were yelling.  Out walked Delia, the morning “yard duty.”  

“Hello my little soccer players! Here is your ball,” she said as she reached into a bag, pulled out a soccer ball, gave it to the boys and watched as off they ran.

I walk with her to the playground and we talk.  I find out that she bought this ball for the boys with her own money because every morning all of these boys with so much energy were wandering around the yard just getting into trouble.  

In the 15 minutes I stood and talked to her, boys would just run up, drop their backpacks and join their “team.”  I use “team” loosely because it was hard to tell whose team was whose.  By 8:30 a.m., there were 40 boys playing a fiercely fun game of soccer.  There was no fighting, no yelling, no bullying, no one was left out — they were just playing. 

When a “goal” was scored (when the ball either hit the retaining wall or flew down the hill on the other side of the yard) they would all yell “GOOOAAALLL!” and high-five, slap each other on the back and line up to start over.  The sportsmanship was contagious.

Delia stood there beaming.  She cheered them on, praising their abilities and calling them each by their first names. 

Every day, for this entire school year, I had to drop my son off early.  He had to be there for his team because he was a “captain.”  

Last night, he was so excited because today was the final game of the playoff, and he was getting a trophy. Delia purchased 40 trophies with her own money.  Each one was personalized with the name of the boy and the team they played on.  She baked cookies for them all.  As she passed out the trophies she said something personal about each of them. 

These boys were beaming with pride. Honestly, this may be the closest some of these kids would ever get to playing on a soccer team.  My son said “This is the best trophy I have ever gotten.”  It's not because it is the biggest, or because there is an undefeated season behind it, but because it is full of love. 

I guarantee, this will be the one trophy still on his dresser when he is in college.

In light of all of the bickering, closures, boundary changes, test scores and overall discontent, Delia did the one thing that seems to be lacking in our community right now: She focused on the kids.  She gave them something to belong to, and believed in them.  She supported, cheered, and validated them.

I am grateful to her for not only what she gave my son this year, but for the lesson she taught me.