New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
To hell and back
BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, October 9th, 2004

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Alfonza Coleman was riding an uptown train last year, lost in the music from his headphones, when a tall stranger approached him. The man talked about high school football and what it means to thousands of communities across America: Crisp autumn evenings under the lights, pep rallies, cheerleaders, whole communities shutting down on Friday nights to root for their kids.

Coleman is a Harlem kid with enough street smarts to be wary of strangers on the subway, but as the man talked, he could hear the fans, the marching band, the pop of pads hitting pads. So when the stranger said he was forming a team to represent Harlem schools, Coleman said he wanted in.

"I had never played football before," Coleman says. "I never even watched football. But I liked what he was saying. I wanted to represent Harlem."

Coleman is now a defensive end for the Harlem Hellfighters, Harlem's first high school football squad in more than 60 years. He's one of the dozens of kids recruited on subway cars, street corners and uptown parks by Duke Fergerson, a former NFL wide receiver who believes city kids should have the same opportunity as suburban kids to sweat, grunt and grow on the gridiron.

In just its first year of PSAL competition, the Hellfighters, who play Stuyvesant at the Midwood High field in Brooklyn today, are a surprising 3-1 and vying for a berth in the city 16-team postseason tournament.

The program doesn't have a weight room, blocking sleds or much training equipment. It has no home field. It practices at Colonel Young Park on 145th St. and Lenox Ave., a baseball facility with no hash marks or goal posts, but plenty of bumps, bare spots and holes.

"We don't have much," says running back Anthony Lowe. "But we have heart. We play harder than anybody."

The NFL and the New York Jets have ponied up more than $50,000 for uniforms, pads and other basics for the team. The Hellfighters are a means to promote football in an African-American community long dominated by NBA hoop dreams, but the NFL's involvement goes beyond mere marketing - league insiders have adopted the team as a pet project.

NFL Europe player personnel coordinator Keenan Davis is the Hellfighters' defensive coordinator and loudest cheerleader, and an NFL Films crew will be at today's game to shoot a documentary on the program. Cowboy legend Roger Staubach has been a behind-the-scenes supporter, along with NFL consultant Gil Brandt, a former Dallas executive. "Duke is a guy who is focused on one thing," says Brandt. "He wants to be a better role model."

The team, which includes students from 13 Harlem schools, is based at the high-achievement Thurgood Marshall Academy, a college-prep school that emphasizes discipline and personal development. Students are required to act like ladies and gentlemen, and football players, even those who attend other schools, are no exception. When one of the Hellfighters' best players repeatedly mouthed off to a ref in the first contest of the season, principal Sandye Johnson came out of the stands and suspended him for the next game.

Many coaches would be furious, but Johnson and Fergerson are taking parallel paths to the same goal: To mold Harlem's young people - often neglected through the decades - into productive, self-respecting citizens. Players are required to attend a two-hour study hall before practice even begins.

"I want to build a program that will be here 100 years from now, that will be a constant vehicle for young men to achieve their goals and ambitions. The lessons we can teach on the football field are transferrable and redeemable at later stages in life," Fergerson says.

"Just do the math," he adds. "It's cheaper to outfit one football team then to put one kid in jail for a year."



* * *

Duke Fergerson says football can save lives. It saved his, he says.


Fergerson could barely read in 1972 when he graduated from high school in Merced, a central California farm town that had little patience for a young black man with a chip on his shoulders. His high school grades were abysmal. His SAT score was a dismal 540.


Fergerson didn't have a lot of options in life, but there was one path he knew he wasn't going to take: He wasn't going to follow in the footsteps of his father, who ended up taking handouts and died in front of a liquor store at the age of 41.


The rough spots of his early years, he says, give him insight into the lives of his players. Some come from broken homes. Many don't have the confidence to take the initiative to stretch themselves, to learn, to grow. "When I yell at my players," Fergerson says, "I'm not yelling at them. I'm yelling at that way of life."


Fergerson taught himself to read and write and wound up at San Diego State University, where he played football and earned a degree in political science. He was drafted by the Cowboys in 1977 but was quickly sent to Seattle in the trade that sent Tony Dorsett to Dallas. In the off-season, he attended summer school and received tutoring to prepare for life after football. After four years in the NFL, he jumped into the business world, got involved in several political campaigns, and did postgraduate work at Harvard.


Fergerson returned to football by accident. He was working with Roger Staubach's company on a Harlem economic redevelopment project in 2002 when he met some kids playing football in a park. He gave the kids, members of a Pop Warner team sponsored by the Abyssinian Baptist Church, some tips. He came back the next day and soon became their coach.


At the end of the season, Fergerson asked one kid where he was going play the following autumn. The boy said he wasn't going to play at all - he'd outgrown Pop Warner ball and none of the Harlem schools offered football. Harlem, Fergerson learned, hadn't had high school football for decades - too costly, too hard to find room to play or practice.


Fergerson thought Harlem kids were long overdue for the joys of football. He hit the street to recruit players, and about 70 kids attended the first practice in the spring of 2003, even though Fergerson had no equipment, no uniforms, no guarantees the team would even play. He named his team the Harlem Hellfighters, after an African-American New York National Guard unit that was highly decorated for its service in World War I. The unit fought under the French flag because the United States barred blacks from combat units.


"There were expectations that we couldn't fight," Fergerson says of the original Hellfighters. "But we fought - with honor and distinction."



* * *

No-contact practices continued throughout the spring and summer of 2003. A lot of kids drifted away, disillusioned by the lack of uniforms and gear, intimidated by the high academic and personal standards set by Fergerson.


The coach, meanwhile, ran into his own frustrations. Education and community leaders told him football was too costly for budget-strapped Harlem schools. Others warned he'd find it difficult to impose football regimentation on Harlem's street kids.


"What it came down to is this: New York is great if you're a developer. It's not great for kids, because they don't generate revenue for the city or state," Fergerson says. "But if we can afford to send somebody to jail when they do bad, why can't we afford to help them do something right?"


PSAL football commissioner Alan Arbuse says officials at other schools also point out that Fergerson's plan to recruit kids from multiple schools gives the Hellfighters an unfair advantage. If individual schools want to play football, he adds, they should do it individually - not as a bloc.


"Nobody wants to see youngsters underserved," Arbuse says. "But we want the same playing field for all schools involved. There are exceptions to the rules, but this is a huge exception."


Fergerson finally contacted Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright, who helped him land a meeting with schools chancellor Joel Klein. Schools are not created equal, Fergerson told the chancellor - some have tremendous facilities and equipment, others have very little. Where's the harm in bending the rules, he asked, to give kids in Harlem the same opportunities as kids in Staten Island?


Klein waived the rules and allowed Harlem schools to form a collective football team. Last year the Hellfighters played a four-game pilot schedule, designed to demonstrate that the program had sufficient student interest and financial resources to play a full season. As a former player, Fergerson was able to get a $10,000 stipend from the NFL Youth Football Fund for uniforms and equipment. The pads didn't arrive until the day before the first game, so the Hellfighters went from no-contact practice to smashmouth football overnight.


They took their lumps last season; the Hellfighters lost one game 62-0. Things are different this year, their first full eight-game season in the PSAL. NFL official Keenan Davis says the Hellfighters have already proved they can play. The next task, the former Louisiana State player adds, is getting Harlem to follow.


"Friday nights, under the lights! That's what football is all about!" he says, looking like he's ready to put on a helmet and run through a brick wall. "The pep squad, the marching band! The people cheering in the stands! It's an experience these kids will cherish for the rest of their lives."



* * *

Few kids who dream of NFL glory ever play in the league, Fergerson says, but that doesn't mean his kids shouldn't try. "Something happened in this country," he says. "Now you get a trophy for participating. Not winning, participating. Kids expect an award just for showing up."


Fergerson tells his players they can use football to advance their lives even if they don't have NFL talent. He's trying to get college recruiters to see his team play. He tells them they can turn their sports experiences into careers as journalists, agents, team officials, league executives.


"Not every kid can be Randy Moss," he says. "But my job is to help them go as far as they can."


The wish list to make those dreams come true is long: Fergersen wants a home field and practice facility (given the price of real estate in New York, that's a tough one), a nutrition center to teach his players how to prepare and eat healthy, balanced diets.


Fergersen's already notched some small victories. Defensive end Coleman has lost 50 pounds since he began playing football. His grades have gone from C's and D's to B's. He wants to go to college and major in accounting.


"I'm more focused now. I have more direction," he says. "And I love representing Harlem."