Demias Jimerson, 11, Penalized for Being “Too Good”

Demias Jimerson, 11, Penalized for Being “Too Good”

Can a 11-year-old boy really be “too good” at football?

After watching Demias Jimerson, a sixth grader playing in Arkansas’ Wilson Intermediate Football League, Terri Bryant, the league’s commissioner, says yes.

Following a seven-touchdown performance by Jimerson in a recent game, his league revived an old rule which essentially “tames” the young athlete’s talents, by preventing him from scoring a touchdown if he has already scored three times and his team leads by 14 or more points.

The re-instituted bylaw, known as the “Madre Hill rule,” is named after former University of Arkansas star and Oakland Raider Madre Hill, who, like Jimerson, played youth football in the Malvern, Ark., area.

In his youth Hill proved so adept at getting the ball into the end zone whenever he touched it that the WIFL came up with the rule to try and keep scores from getting too out of hand.

In Demias’ case, the rule is being enforced to help the other fifth and sixth graders on the field develop as football players too, not to punish young Jimerson, says commissioner Bryant.

“The other players on both teams, 21 are just left sort of, this is all Demias,” she said. “So that’s why the Madre Hill Rule has been implemented.”

While most kids (and their parents) would throw a literal fit, if faced with a similar circumstance, Jimerson took the news of the rule like a champ.

“I got, kinda got shocked because I didn’t know that was gonna happen, but it did,” said Jimerson. Adding, “I’m ok with it. I’m gonna run hard and bring our team to victory, but God always comes first, before anything, and grades second.”