Strawberry Mansion High fields their first football team

A FEW WEEKS ago, coach Steve Quigley was so worried about how few kids came out for the first varsity football team in Strawberry Mansion High School history that he drove through the neighborhood searching for players.

"I drove up and down Susquehanna, Lehigh, Diamond," Quigley said. "I pulled one kid over who was riding his bike and told him, 'We're having physicals for the new varsity football team.' He never showed up. Another kid said his girlfriend had a baby and he had to work to support them. Another kid was taking care of his sick grandmother."

One of Quigley's small core of players saw him driving up to strangers on the streets of Strawberry Mansion and told him it wasn't the safest way to recruit.

Quigley spoke this week about the challenge of building a team from scratch as he stood in the outfield of the Mander Recreation Center youth baseball field on 33rd Street near Diamond, just before his football practice. All through August, Quigley ran afternoon practices on the shadeless field for the 11 or 12 kids who showed up under a merciless sun.

Mansion dressed 15 kids for its first two varsity games on the road against Roxborough and Olney - big schools with twice as many players, who predictably overwhelmed the Mansion Knights, 43-6 and 42-0, respectively.

After the Olney loss, Mansion's fighting spirit was summed up by Darell Young, 16, who played on the offensive and defensive lines for the entire game, and whose uniform was stained with sweat and dirt from three hours of hard labor in the heat.

"I've played every down in our games, except for one down when my shoulder came out of place," he said proudly. "I like to hit and I like to block. I love playing football."

The Mansion core plays at Kensington tonight, but with students returning to school this week and seeing that varsity football is a reality, Quigley hopes to have more players for the Sept. 20 home opener at 29th Street near Chalmers Avenue versus KIPP- DuBois Collegiate Academy.

KIPP is the first team Mansion will play in its own, small-school, Philadelphia Public League AA division. Mansion has only 200 or so male students, a tiny pool of potential talent.

Assistant Coach Derrick Lewis-El, a health and physical education teacher, said: "Unfortunately, when you start out, nobody wants to build the foundation of the house. But once the whole thing's built and it's all pretty, everyone will want to come to the housewarming.

"Mansion is a basketball school," Lewis-El said. "The kids walk in and see the Maureece Rice banner, Mansion's all-time basketball scorer. They don't see a banner for our all-time leading rusher because [in 50 years] we've never had a varsity football team."

Quigley, a history teacher, persisted through the long summer with his "Braveheart"-style band of stalwarts because he understands the mission that principal Linda Wayman's been on since she took over the chronically troubled school three years ago.

Mansion, which had spent years on the state's "persistently dangerous" list and was in imminent danger of closing, was saved by Wayman's refusal to abandon the neighborhood's economically disadvantaged children.

She teamed up with prosecutor Robert Reed from the U.S. Attorney's Office, and Dan O'Brien from the city's PhillyRising neighborhood rehab program to flood Mansion kids with stay-in-school incentives they never had before.

Wannabe chefs have a culinary-arts program using food they grow across the street in a former vacant lot.

A student-run Youth Court resolves noncriminal incidents without police involvement. There's a "Reel Voices" movie-making program in which students film their true-life stories on neighborhood streets.

"Ms. Wayman wants to give the kids whatever they want," Quigley said. "If a kid needs a coat, she says, 'I'm going to do that for you.' If the kids want a football team, she wants them to have a football team.

"Ms. Wayman always tells us, 'We're in the life-saving business,' " Quigley said. "I've had kids who got shot. I've had kids who got sent away for shooting somebody. So even if I only have 12 kids here with me at football practice, I know those 12 kids are safe. I know that for all of August, I had the football kids here and they were safe."

Evan Kramp, Mansion's athletic director, said: "For some of the young men who play for us, this is the hook for getting them into school and getting an education. For some, it's matter of life and death. There's nothing waiting for them except what's out on the streets."

With only a dozen kids at practice, some of whom never played football before, Quigley focused on bare-bones basics - a run play between the tackles, a sweep, one pass play and, repeatedly, basic blocking techniques.

"Nine of the 11 starters on offense, also start on defense," Quigley said. "It's mentally draining. It's physically draining. That's the struggle."

He's never had the luxury of running 11 vs. 11 scrimmages because he's never had 22 guys.

"So the offense may run a play and you think it looks all right," he said. "But it's totally different in a game when someone live is in front of you and you get hit."

As practice ended, Quigley said: "Some schools have a football legacy. Some have senior leadership. We're a school without a football legacy. Everything we do, we're doing for the first time."

The exhausted Mansion players walked off the practice field and back to their school. Quigley glanced over at the Mander Rec courts, where there were more kids playing basketball than he has on his varsity football team.

"See those kids playing basketball on the playground?" he said to Lewis-El. "One day, I'd like to hear some of them say, 'I want to play football for Mansion.' "

The two coaches share that dream today, hoping it becomes reality tomorrow.