It seemed at first that the day would be a repeat of the first two scrimmages. But then the yards became more difficult. Teaneck’s defense stuffed Mo Better’s runs and its offense pounded forward for good gains. After each play, Oomz bent over with fatigue and walked slowly to the huddle. He complained to his teammates that he’d hurt his hand when it smacked into a helmet. On some defensive plays, he barely moved. Late in the first half, a Teaneck runner burrowed into the middle of the defense, right through Oomz’s arms, on the way to a long touchdown. It was the first score the Pee Wees had allowed all preseason. The boys on Teaneck’s sidelines jumped up and down and shouted in joy. The Pee Wees dropped their heads and slapped their arms to their sides. A few shouted at the ground in anger. Some looked at the sky and shook their heads. By the time halftime came, Mo Better’s early success felt distant.
As the Pee Wees sipped water on the sidelines, though, the frustration seemed to have worn off. Several of the boys were laughing with their helmets off. Oomz toyed with a roll of athletic tape, ripping off pieces to wrap on his facemask. Isaiah kept his helmet on. He had seen this before: the way his teammates would shrug off their poor play and drown their disappointment in a barrage of humor. He believed it was their way of suppressing the pressure and urgency of a tight game—as if by making light of their struggles they could avoid the pain of failure. He believed this was why they lost so many games last season. A few boys complimented Isaiah on his touchdowns. He nodded solemnly at them but did not speak. Oomz ran up to him and jumped on his back. “You killin’ ’em out there, boy!” he told Isaiah. Isaiah pushed Oomz off and looked at him sternly.
“You gotta stop crying, though,” Isaiah said.
“But my pinkie!” Oomz said with a wide grin.
“You too busy jokin’, boy.”
“We playin’ good, man.”
“We should be smackin’ ’em.”
Then Isaiah turned to the rest of the team and said, “We playin’ like they Brooklyn United!”
The boys fell silent. Esau stepped to the front of the group.
“He right,” Esau said. “Y’all seem hungover out there. Like y’all was drinking last night or something. All y’all backs: stop dancin’ and run somebody over. You don’t take somebody heart by juking. Run somebody over. Stop dancing. That’s not for y’all. We on offense next. We just gotta run it down they throat.”
ISAIAH AND OOMZ took pride in being running backs. Running back is a tough and glorious position. A running back gets the ball behind the line of scrimmage and has the whole field before him with all 11 defenders seeking to crush him, diving at his knees and launching themselves at his head. “Running back is the best position,” Oomz said. “You get a handoff, right? You got vision, you got everything in front of you.” A running back can sprint around the defenders or make quick cuts to juke by them, but most often a running back must lower his shoulder and bang helmets. Advancing through each level––from Pop Warner to high school to college to the pros––meant defying the odds and avoiding catastrophic injury on hundreds of these carries. The average NFL career lasted less than four years; the average for a running back was around two and a half.
Modern NFL and college football relied increasingly on quarterbacks and passing. But youth football remained old-school. Strategies were simple and teams often won because they had the fastest, strongest, and savviest runners. Running back was perhaps the most prestigious position at this level, the one that drew the most eyes over the course of a game. Running backs got special attention at Mo Better. Coach Vick spent much of his time at practice pulling aside his young prospective backs to teach them the fundamentals of the position while the rest of the team worked on blocking and footwork drills. Mo Better had earned a reputation for producing great running backs, from Dajuan Mitchell to Curtis Samuel. The coaches expected this year’s Pee Wees to defend that legacy.
Oomz opened the second half at Teaneck with a punishing seven-yard run, right up the middle, dragging three defenders before falling to the ground. On the next play, he ran to the outside, and it looked like he might try to beat the defensive back to the sideline, but then he slowed—eyes scanning the bodies around him, mind reading the possible moves—and sliced back to the middle of the field, trapping the defensive back behind a blocker, before sprinting back to the outside for a 30-yard run. The offense pounded the ball further down the field, eating up yards with each run, until Oomz blasted through the line for a five-yard touchdown.
“Oomz comin’ to play!” Vick shouted from the sidelines.
On defense, Oomz was energized. On a third down, he blitzed up the middle and smacked Teaneck’s running back three yards behind the line, a hit so hard the boy’s head snapped back and his back hit the ground with his legs still in the air.
“Let him know it’s real in Brownsville, Oomz!” Vick hollered.
“That looked like his father almost!” another coach said.
“That boy don’t even want the ball no more,” Vick said.
Oomz reached a hand down to help the boy up, but the boy didn’t try to get up. The referee and several coaches jogged over to him. As in most youth football games, there was no doctor on the sidelines. Many programs barely scraped together enough funds to pay referees and league fees, hoping each week that the concession stand made enough cash to cover the game-day expenses. A medic on hand was considered a luxury. And so, the coaches knelt beside the boy, asking him questions about his name and the day of the week. A majority of injuries, according to Coach Chris, initially appear worse than they are because kids are kids and football is rough and most 11-year-olds are still getting accustomed to playing through bruises and bumps. After a few minutes, the boy pushed himself up to his feet and slowly walked to the sideline. The coaches concluded that he did not have a concussion.
Mo Better scored touchdowns on the next two possessions. Teaneck didn’t move the ball past midfield. On the sidelines and in the stands, Mo Better’s coaches and parents savored the success, joking and smiling, growing more and more eager for the start of the regular season the following week. Some parents, already thinking about the drive home, discussed whether they should avoid the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge because wasn’t Al Sharpton leading a “justice for Eric Garner” march there today? A few parents scrolled through their phones between plays.
With the scrimmage winding down, Isaiah took a pitch, stiff-armed a defender, and ran down the side of the field for another big run, bringing more cheers from Mo Better’s bleachers. From the corner of his eye, Isaiah spotted a defender racing toward him. Isaiah thought the defender had an angle on him, so he throttled down, considered cutting back inside, then decided to just outrun him. But the boy had made up ground, and he dove at Isaiah’s legs. His helmet slammed into Isaiah’s left knee and Isaiah toppled out of bounds, into Teaneck’s sideline. Isaiah felt a sharp pain pierce his knee. He grabbed the knee and groaned. The crowd went silent.
“Coach! Coach! Your running back, coach!” Teaneck’s coach shouted to Chris, who ran with Esau and Andrell to Isaiah, who lay on his back and feared the worst. Chris pressed his fingers on the sides of Isaiah’s knee and Isaiah told him where it hurt. Chris bent Isaiah’s knee, slowly, slightly, gently, and Isaiah told him when it hurt. The coaches helped him to his feet and Isaiah limped to the sideline with his arms on their shoulders, putting almost no pressure on the injured leg. He sat on a metal bench behind the sideline and held a cold water bottle to his knee.
THE MOOD ON the bus home was jubilant, full of laughter, optimism, and declarations like, “Man, I be gettin’ like one hundred texts from girls a day!” But Isaiah sat quietly near the front, staring into the screen of his mother’s iPad. He didn’t know if he’d be able to practice on Monday. He’d hidden from his teammates how worried he was about the injury. When he’d limped from the field to the bus, he told everybody he was fine.
“You good?” Oomz asked. “You gon’ be at practice?”
“Oh, hel
l yeah,” Isaiah replied.
In truth, he did not know how badly his knee was damaged, only that he could barely walk. His thoughts bounced between hope and dread. In his mind, he relived that final play, imagined all the ways it could have gone differently, if he had cut inside here or accelerated there. On the field, Isaiah was a technician and a perfectionist. Unlike some of his teammates, he did not see football as merely a chaotic and violent jumble of bodies. There was a science to anticipating an opponent’s strategy and movement, and there was an art to applying that science in the midst of the chaotic and violent jumble of bodies. On his mother’s iPad, he watched a recording of the game he’d just played. He rewound and re-watched his mistakes more often than his highlights. He saw the holes he had missed, the tackles he should have broken. He rewound and re-watched until he understood the error, memorized it, and identified the tools he needed to fix it on the next try. Watch the outside linebacker’s first step on an off-tackle handoff before bouncing out or slicing in. Look for the cut-back lane when the safety goes too wide on a pitch. It calmed Isaiah to review the footage, and the thought of becoming even more dominant excited him. Yet all this preparation and improvement would mean nothing, he thought, if he couldn’t get back on the field. He stared into the screen and tried to lose himself in the video, watching himself glide across the grass.
14
WHAT THEY’VE BEEN WAITING FOR
Early to mid-September 2014
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SEASON’S FIRST OFFICIAL GAME, Isaiah got a reprieve. His knee, diagnosed as mildly sprained, had improved steadily, but Isaiah knew it was far too weak for a game. After a frustrating week of limping around Betsy Head, he planned to suit up in pads and play at least some snaps at line, where he could limit his running. The team had only 16 players, the league minimum, which meant Isaiah had to play at least 10 snaps to avoid a forfeit. More than that, though, Coach Chris expected him to play. All week, Chris had told him he’d have to “tough it out” and “play through the pain.” A hobbled Isaiah was still a better option than some of the team’s less-talented players. So, Isaiah steeled himself. He lay in bed and visualized the game.
Then his phone buzzed. Coach Chris had called to tell him that the game was canceled. Their opponent didn’t have enough players and had to forfeit. “I was mad and happy at the same time,” Isaiah said. “It was like a weight off.”
His knee healed to full strength over the following days. By the time practice rolled around the next Saturday, Isaiah was running and cutting like he had been all summer. On his way home, his mind on the game less than 24 hours away, he stopped by the corner store to get a sandwich. Oomz was already inside, waiting for the deli man to finish cooking his order. They slapped hands.
“Let’s blow ’em out,” he said to Oomz.
“Mm-hmm,” Oomz hummed.
Coach James walked in a few seconds later.
“Y’all make sure to rest up today. Stay off ya feet,” he said. “School’s ’bout to start too, so make sure you start getting ya homework done before practice.”
The boys nodded.
“Oomz, you still going to that school over here next year?”
“I don’t know,” Oomz said. “My mom tryna get me into a junior high up by where she’s at. She want me to get out of here.”
“Well your mom, she’s doing the right thing.”
THE WEEK AFTER the forfeit, Hart was eager to finally play a real contest. The night before game day, he had trouble falling asleep. He woke up feeling energized, pulled off his blanket, shuffled down the stairs, and ate a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a handful of jelly beans. He felt he’d been cheated out of a game last week, and so this week, he said, “I gotta play twice as good.” He made a bet with his father: if he got at least two sacks, his father would take the family to Olive Garden after the game.
After breakfast, Hart and his father went into the bathroom and Hart stepped on the weighing scale. He was 122 pounds. He got dressed in his pads and uniform and stepped back onto the scale: 130.5 pounds, half a pound below his weight limit. This was cutting it close. His father was nervous about the official weigh-in before the game all through the drive to Franklin K. Lane High School on Jamaica Avenue, on the border between Brooklyn and Queens. They pulled into the parking lot at 10 a.m., three hours before kickoff.
The Mitey Mites were on the field. The morning was hot. The sun reflected off the windows of the high school’s main building, a towering brick colonial-style structure with white columns just behind one set of goalposts. Elevated subway tracks ran behind the other. The smell of hot dogs and burgers floated around a concession tent, where Coach Gary and his cousin worked the grills. Parents and players filed into the stands, with Mo Better’s contingent gathering on the north end of the bleachers and the Elizabeth, New Jersey, visitors on the south side. Hart had a sheen of sweat by the time he found several of his teammates in a circle playing with a small arcade basketball on a cement walkway beside the bleachers. He put down his pads and bag and slapped hands. The boys showed off dribble moves, tossing fadeaway jump shots at an imaginary hoop. The ball went around the circle, each boy trying to one-up the last boy’s moves. When the ball got to Oomz, he dribbled it between his legs twice, spun around, and just as he was punctuating his turn with a twisting finger roll, a voice behind him called out, “Yoooo!”
It was his father, Big Oomz, walking over with a scowl and shaking his head. He was a tall, lean man, with a shaved dome, square jaw, and day-old stubble. He wore a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He grabbed Oomz’s arm and pulled him out of the circle. “Time to chill out and get focused,” he said. He led Oomz to a cement bench in the shade of the bleachers and sat him down beside his grandmother. “Getcha mind right,” Big Oomz told him.
The other Pee Wees stopped playing too. They picked up their pads and bags and found an open area in the dark hollow beneath the bleachers. Giant tires, steel pipes, and sticks of plywood littered the space. The boys sat on the tires.
“I can only imagine how hot that turf’s gonna be,” said Hart.
“Everybody’s gonna have a couple of turf burns,” said Isaiah.
“I be hopping right up, though!” said Hart.
“Yeah, it’s no thing,” said Isaiah.
“Yo, we gon’ bust these fools,” said Donnie.
“We busted them last year,” said Time Out.
“We did not bust them!” said Naz. “It was a tough game. We won by one point. We probably woulda lost that game if it wasn’t for all they penalties.”
The cheers and groans in the stands above them echoed within the cavern, and the stomping feet shook the bleachers with a metallic rattle. Hart sat silently now. He looked at the ground and bobbed his head as if listening to music on headphones. He prepared his mind for the violence to come. He was the kind of boy who smiled a lot and asked a lot of silly questions and showed giggling excitement over the smallest joys: a turkey and egg sandwich from the corner store, finishing a book report, a new pair of football gloves. But on the field, he seemed like a different kid. He possessed a roughness. Sometimes that roughness accidentally seeped out on the playground at school, in games of tag or basketball, and his teachers had to tell him to go easier on his classmates, who were smaller and meeker. In a few hours, though, he could release that energy. His fingers tapped the tire. On the field, he told himself, he was unstoppable; he was a destroyer. He was stronger than any other boy on the field, he told himself. No other boy could block him and any boy who stood in front of him would get drilled with a heavy shoulder to the sternum. This was a violent game, and Hart aimed to be the most violent boy on the field.
IT WAS A good show from the start. On the first play, Isaiah fought off a blocker and tackled the Elizabeth running back five yards behind the line of scrimmage. On the next play, the ball slipped out of the quarterback’s hands and Marquis dove onto the fumble. Five plays later, Time Out scored the Pee Wees’ first touchdown of the season with a fou
r-yard run. They got the ball right back when Oomz sliced through the line and hit the quarterback, knocking the ball loose and recovering it himself. Three plays later, Isaiah jogged into the end zone for an easy touchdown.
By now, it was clear this was a very uneven fight. The Mo Better Jaguars were certainly bigger and more athletic than the Elizabeth Packers. They were more skilled, too. But on top of that, they also seemed far more disciplined and focused. The Brownsville boys on the sideline stood shoulder to shoulder, watching and cheering with their helmets on; they shouted “pass!” and “run!” and “fumble!” to their teammates on the field. By contrast, the Packers across the field were down on their knees or sitting on their butts, fiddling with their shoelaces or the turf, their helmets on the ground beside them. The game quickly became a blowout. Mo Better’s offense plowed down the field on each turn, with Oomz pounding through the middle and Isaiah sprinting around the outside. Elizabeth’s offense struggled to even get the ball across the line of scrimmage, as Hart and Donnie blasted through the front lines on each play. And those runners who made it past the front lines were quickly picked up and thrown to the turf by Isaiah and Oomz. They slapped hands and patted shoulder pads after big hits. The hard game face Isaiah had worn earlier was gone. By the third quarter, he was smiling behind his facemask after many plays. This was the performance he had hoped for. On defense, he was flying around the field, drilling people to the ground. On offense, he was cutting, stiff-arming, and running people over. The field seemed wide open, every square inch accessible to him. The game felt easy and fun.
On one play, he blitzed around the edge of the offensive line, lowered his shoulder, and smacked the quarterback to the turf. Isaiah let out a shout and stood over the quarterback, looking down at the boy and flexing his arms. The referee ordered him not to celebrate like that again. When Isaiah returned to the huddle, Oomz began laughing at him. “Isaiah was feelin’ himself,” Oomz later said. “He’s so calm and chill in real life, but in games he’s so intense.” Isaiah carried himself with a fierce swagger on the field. On the first play of the third quarter, he took a handoff and raced toward the outside. Two defenders read the play well and cut him off in the backfield, so Isaiah cut away from them, angling his sprint away from the line of scrimmage, losing ground from where he had started. The defenders chased him deeper into the backfield, before Isaiah accelerated straight toward the sidelines and turned the corner, beating the defenders to the outside and zooming past the rest of the defense for a long touchdown. When he reached the end zone, he dropped the ball and pretended to rip open his jersey to reveal an imaginary Superman logo underneath—a touchdown celebration Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton had made famous. He posed that way for a few seconds, as if the whole world was watching him.
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