SPRINGDALE — Hank Taylor had no problem drinking one milkshake after another as an elusive 10-year-old 60 years ago.

Taylor’s father promised him a milkshake if he scored a touchdown while quarterbacking Springdale’s lightweight football team in the first Springdale Kiwanis Kids Day Football in 1953.

Taylor responded by scoring three touchdowns in a close loss to Fayetteville at what’s now Jarrell Williams Bulldog Stadium. He repeatedly took the snap, darted 20-30 yards downfield and then changed direction until he found the end zone.

“I’m telling you, after that game I went out and I had three milkshakes because that was a big deal,” said Taylor, who now has an insurance company in Springdale.

The Springdale Kiwanis Kids Day Football program began the same year as President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. The idea was for children from Fayetteville and Springdale to be introduced to the fundamentals of football while giving them a chance to renew the rivalry between the two cities.

Several thousand mouthpieces later, the Kids Day program will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a slate of games later this week. Fayetteville got rid of its program a few years after the inaugural 1953 game.

“It’s hard to believe that something would endure that long,” Taylor said. “I thought it was a lot of fun because you’re a kid, you’re putting a little football uniform on and you go out there.”

A group of around 325 kids, ranging from first grade to sixth grade, have spent the past few weeks learning the basics of blocking and tackling during the free football program.

Coaches have shown first-time players how to properly hold a football and get into a defensive stance. The older, more experienced players have been taught offensive concepts.

Another 110 kids have learned how to be cheerleaders, proving that it’s never too early to get kids in a football-crazed city like Springdale ready for Friday nights.

“I think growing up I pretty much figured, ‘Yeah, this thing will be around forever,’” said Bryan Clinkscales, who has spent the past 10 years as director of the Kiwanis youth football program.

“I think now that I’m older it is amazing to me how long it’s been around just because of change. Things change.”

Remaining The Same

The Springdale Kiwanis Club and the Springdale Youth Center provide the funds and nearly all of the football equipment needed for the program. Kids must bring their own mouthpiece and football pants.

On a recent night, players from Springdale High and Springdale Har-Ber helped put a large gathering of kids through football drills. They taught the newcomers the basics of football, something many of the teenagers got years earlier in the same program.

“We’re just trying to get our kids involved with the younger kids in Springdale,” Springdale coach Shane Patrick said. “Hopefully, we can spark an interest that will keep them in football and want to grow up to either be Bulldogs or Wildcats.”

Several players who participated in the Springdale Kiwanis Kids Day Football have grown into big-time college football prospects, including former Springdale quarterback Mitch Mustain.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Titans wide receiver Damian Williams and former Indianapolis Colts tight end Joe Dean Davenport went from running around the field at Kids Day to running out of the tunnel in NFL stadiums.

“A bulk of our players have played Kiwanis football,” said Har-Ber coach Chris Wood, who has helped with the program and had his two sons play in it as kids.

“So when I get a senior class and they come all the way through, their first memories of football is being on the Red team or the White team and playing at Jarrell Williams Stadium.”

Former Arkansas linebacker Jim Ed Reed grew up in a football family, and he admitted he “couldn’t wait for the next summer to get here” once he started the Kiwanis program as a second-grader in 1985.

Reed said the program helped introduce him to football, where he developed into a love of the game and a spot on the Razorbacks in the late 1990s.

And after around 10 years of helping to coach in the Springdale Kiwanis Kids Day Football, Reed will take over as the program’s director next year when Clinkscales steps down from the position.

“This is a tradition,” Reed said. “What we do with Kids Day Football is a tradition, so we’re going to continue to do things the way we’re doing them now.”

Changing Times

Clinkscales’ introduction to the three-week youth football program came in the late 1970s, when he took part in it as an elementary school kid.

He said other sports have caused the turnout for the program to decline over the years, particularly traveling baseball leagues that occur in the summer. There also has been another recent change.

The Springdale Kiwanis Kids Day has followed the national trend of trying to get players to quit tackling with the crown of their helmets to limit concussions.

“We’ve never had a head injury, but as you can tell from watching college and NFL, it’s just happening more and more,” Clinkscales said. “So we’re trying to teach that a little bit more, start at a young age so they don’t develop a bad habit.”

Or as Reed put it, “We’re teaching heads up. We want to be a heads-up league.”

Clinkscales said he felt he was ready to step down after a decade as the Kiwanis program’s director, giving Reed the opportunity to bring new idea to the program.

The hope is to keep the program going well beyond its 60th anniversary.

“I guess after 10 years I get so used to doing things a certain way that now maybe it’s time for somebody else to look at it and bring fresh ideas to it to find ways to improve it,” Clinkscales said.

“If we don’t find ways to improve it, then it’s probably going to get old and static to people.”