LiC: Kanewai Football Practice

In early November, I observed a football team made up of young boys, ages 5 through 7, practicing with their coaches in Kanewai park. The boys appeared to be of different ethnic backgrounds, some looked Asian, a few looked Hawaiian and a couple were African American. There were about 6 or 7 boys at this practice along with their four adult male coaches. I had noticed this group practicing football about every other day when I went to the park to run. I wanted a chance to more closely observe the language interactions between the players, who were of various ethnic backgrounds and the coaches, who appeared Hawaiian or “local”. The reason I was interested in this particular group was because I overheard the coaches speaking Pidgin to their players as I passed by. I wondered how the children would respond, being that not all of the children appeared “local”. Every time I passed by the team, I would try and listen to how the coaches and the players interacted verbally with each other.

One day, I had time to watch a scrimmage between the players and the coaches. I was able to hear two of the coaches speaking Pidgin fairly heavily to the players as they instructed them on routes they could run and praised them for doing a good job. To my surprise, most of the kids did not use Pidgin to respond to their coaches' remarks. I found it intriguing that although the players did not speak Pidgin, they were fully capable of understanding their coaches commands and comments and were able to respond using their most comfortable form of speech.