BOISE—Defending a new conditioning drill that involves youth soccer players wrapping live cobras around a pair of chopsticks over an open fire pit, area coach Ross Beltz explained that the exercise served to prepare them for a future where people would make them do things they did not want to do. “Nobody wants to do this. That’s the whole point. Someday—probably tomorrow—Dominic’s mom is going to ask him to do something he’d rather not do. So will his boss, his landlord, and his parole officer. This exercise helps him get ready,” said Beltz, who later confirmed over e-mail that his players, statistically speaking, would probably never again encounter a venomous snake, chopsticks, and an open flame in the same place. When asked what skill, then, he was hoping the kids would develop, Beltz said his skeptics are asking the wrong question. “The value lies precisely in the activity being pointless, random, and unpleasant. If it was supposed to be useful, it would be teaching them something,” he said. “That way, if someone asks Timmy to do something that makes no sense when he’s an adult, he won’t waste anybody’s time asking what the hell it’s for.” At press time, Beltz was growing impatient with an eight-year-old who kept wondering whether the pain on his arm was from a burn, a stab from the chopstick, or the cobra. Beltz was quick to assure reporters that the boy was fine, and that the questions were just his way of asking for a water break.