Like a 'hooker' in a 'scrum'

A key player ina Rugby Sevens scrum is the 'hooker'. The hooker uses his legs to hook the ball so that his team members can then take the ball. So the hooker's presence and role is central, but it means nothing without the direct and constant support of the other members of his team. In fact, apparently nothing in Rugby can be achieved without teamwork. Unlike soccer or a few other contact sports, rugby fully integrates teamwork into the entirety of the game.
My eldest son is the hooker in his school's team for his category. Though he walked around with an inflated ego for a few days after being assigned the position, he quickly lost the haughty attitude once he understood that he was just another player, that other players had other roles, and that he had to play his part.
For children, and many times for adults, it is tremendously complex to learn how to be a protagonist at one point and then serve as a player who supports another's protagonism. Teachers go crazy finding ways to teach teamwork using multiple scenarios, spending long hours in class modeling behaviors, and correcting errors. I've seen only one fantastic teacher of English accomplish teaching teamwork in a manner that looks effortless. I've seen an abundance of (and personally experienced countless) disappointments while tackling the same challenge. For some reason in Rugby the notion that everybody's indispensable just clicks for boys. Sure, there's guidance from the coach, but the players appear to automatically acquire a sense of unity that is foreign to other contact sports.
Last weekend we watched a soccer match where very few players were the stars of the game. It was clear that the majority of the players were anonymous even while being on the pitch. More often than not I see the same phenomenon ocurr in the classroom with students; there are those who excel and there are those who go unannounced and unsung. At home it feels like an impossible task to make certain that all the boys feel they are important. Perhaps the answer is to allow children to be the hooker in the scrum and feel that at times they are the key player, but at other times, their job is to help someone else shine.