The gloves are gone and the pigskins are out.

Fairland's Little League Football teams were out finishing their first week of practice Friday at the Lawrence County Fair Grounds, the bullseye for The Dart.

"They work hard for little kids," Tim Fisher, a little league coach of 25 years, said. "People say they can't learn it, but they can learn anything. They have the patience."

The first week is for conditioning and fundamentals, then the young players will move on to playing.

First-year player River Daniels said the footballers have been running, catching balls and hitting bags all week. He said it has been fun though.

"It's my favorite sport," Daniels said. "You get to hurt people."

Kyle Sowards has played four years and loves it, though not always the first week.

"This is the hardest week because we have to get used to everything," he said.

What brings Sowards back to the sport each year is the excitement.

"I like getting really excited when I tackle people and when we win," Sowards said.

Fellow fourth-year player Cole Young agrees.

"The games are really fun and practice is very fun too," Young said.

"You get to hit people."

What both boys are really waiting for is the Turf Bowl.

"I like to try to go to the Turf Bowl," Sowards, who plays the quarterback position, said.

The game is the creme de la creme of Little League Football.

"The Turf Bowl is the Super Bowl of little league," Bobbie Young, Cole Young's mother, said.

What may be most exciting about it is where the children get to play.

"If you get to the Turf Bowl you get to play on Marshall's field," Cole Young said.

The 9-year-old said he wants to play on Marshall's football team when he goes to college and said his favorite team is the Jets.

Soward is also thinking toward the future.

"I'm going to go as far in sports as I can," he said.

The Dart is a weekly feature in which a reporter throws a dart at a map of Lawrence County and finds a story where it lands.