Robert Orr Jr. Wants Kingman on the Map
QB Magazine Athlete Feature
Most second graders, asked for a long-term goal, will say something about the NFL. Robert Orr Jr. said something about his town.
“My long term goal is to put Kingman football on the map.”
Kingman, Arizona sits out on Route 66 in the northwest corner of the state, a long way from anywhere that gets talked about in football circles. Orr is in second grade there, Class of 2036, and he has already worked out that where he is from is going to be part of the story.
He also identified it, without any hedging, as the hardest thing about his football life so far.
“The biggest challenge I’ve faced is coming from a small town,” he said. “I’ve overcome it by working my tail off and beating teams from the big city.”
The Drive
That last part is not a figure of speech. Orr plays for the Sin City Generals, a program based a couple of hours down the highway in Las Vegas — which means his football involves regularly leaving town to go find better competition, and then measuring himself against it.
He credits those coaches first when asked who has shaped him.
“Coach Hakeem, Coach Cash Smith and Coach Kash, because they gave me a chance to throw the ball.”
They gave me a chance to throw the ball. For a kid from a small town showing up to a big-city program, that is not a small thing, and he clearly knows it. Back home, his coach Wil works with him on training and getting stronger.
He has also been through the Elev8 QB Academy camp in January — his first real camp, and the kind of environment where a young quarterback finds out quickly where he stands.
A Dot to Amari Jones
The play he keeps is one throw, described in one sentence, with his teammate named.
“I threw a dot to my teammate Amari Jones on a post route for a 50 yard touchdown.”
Two things stand out. The first is that a second grader is describing a post route by name, which means somebody has taught him the route tree and he was paying attention. The second is that Amari Jones gets full credit in a story that Orr could easily have told entirely about himself.
The word dot shows up twice in his answers, actually. It also appears in his reason for picking a favorite quarterback.
“Dak Prescott. I like how he can extend plays and throw dots on the run.”
Extending plays and throwing accurately while moving — that is a fairly sophisticated thing to admire, and it lines up neatly with how Orr describes the position itself: “Taking command of the offense and executing plays.”
Both Ways
There is one more thing he wanted on the record, and it has nothing to do with quarterback.
“I also love to make tackles on defense at OLB/DE.”
He plays both ways, and he is not shy about which side of the ball is fun. That is a healthy thing at his age — the kids who spend a few years hitting people tend to arrive at high school with a physicality that pure specialists have to go find later.
His short-term goals are to get stronger and, in his words, become a student of the game. He is seven years old and has been playing for two years, which he took up after watching the pros on TV.
Asked what he enjoys most about football, he did not narrow it down at all.
“I like everything football.”
Kingman may hear about him yet.
A Note on Memberships
Robert is in second grade, and there is a whole football life ahead of him. Nothing is being decided for a long time yet.
What a QB Magazine membership does at this age is keep the record. A profile and an athlete graphic give his family a place where each season gets saved as it happens — the Generals seasons, the camps, the throws like the one to Amari Jones — so that years from now there is an actual account of how it started. It is a keepsake first and everything else much later.
Explore membership options at quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships.
Instagram: @robbyfojr