THEIR FOOTBALL DREAMS ON HOLD
Amid pandemic, Roosevelt seniors playing game they love has been a mixed bag across the nation
Damian Avalos has a dream. It goes like this: Start his f irst game as the Roosevelt Rough Riders’ quarterback. Lead them to a win over archrival Garfield in the “East L. A. Classic,” their first in a decade. Make a run in the playoffs, shocking the whole Southern California prep football scene.
He can almost touch it. And yet, halfway through his senior year, the vision feels more abstract with each passing day. Earlier this month, he and his teammates were told that they could no longer work out together in preparation for a spring season because of rising numbers of COVID- 19 cases and hospitalizations. Now Avalos is having trouble sleeping.
“When I’m laying down in bed, I just start thinking those thoughts, and it makes me frustrated,” he said. “Because me, as one person, I can’t control the whole state. But if I was a leader, I would control everyone and just make everyone be safe.”
Across the country in Texas, Dewayne Coleman had a dream, too, entering his senior year. The vision went like this: Take his San Antonio Roosevelt Rough Riders to the playoffs. Beat powerful neighbor Converse Judson. Earn a college scholarship.
Even in Texas, where “Friday Night Lights” is a way of life, Coleman worried that COVID would shut down football just like it did
his track and f ield season last spring. But Texas decided to let its young men play, trusting that the boys’ passion for the sport would guide them in following a long list of health and safety protocols.
Months later on a December Saturday afternoon, there was Coleman barreling over a Judson linebacker for the game- winning touchdown in a first- round playoff game. The Rough Riders won 28- 21, a result the San Antonio ExpressNews called a “stunner.”
“Coach gave me a QB power, and I was just determined to score for my team, my school and the whole Roosevelt community,” Coleman said.
And what of L. A. Roosevelt? Nothing about weighing what’s best for teenagers against what’s best for public health is simple.
The decisions of state high school athletic associations on fall football ref lected the nation’s coronavirus response. They were highly varied and often driven by each region’s political leanings.
America’s 14 Roosevelt Rough Riders football teams tell the tale, with L. A., Fresno, Portland, Ore., Seattle, Honolulu, Chicago, Washington, D. C., and Long Island, N. Y., opting not to play while San Antonio, Sioux Falls, S. D., Johnstown, Colo., and Kent, Ohio, staged their seasons. St. Louis and Des Moines started seasons only to play one and two games, respectively.
Avalos understood why California postponed football, but at the time he assumed there would be games in the spring. He respects the seriousness of the coronavirus after contracting it during the summer as it spread through the two- bedroom home in Boyle Heights he shares with his mother, grandparents, sister and uncle. Avalos lost his sense of taste and smell and battled headaches, but nobody in his family died. He knows they are lucky.
Avalos is not advocating for high school football over health and safety. He has seen the real- life effects of the pandemic, how so many lives have been toppled by economic hardship, like his grandfather who lost his job.
But he has also seen prep football games played in other parts of the country. It doesn’t feel fair — an opinion shared by that other Rough Riders quarterback in the Lone Star State.
“I would want the officials to make a way for all people to play the sport they love,” Coleman said. “Because it’s more than just a game. It’s a brotherhood. It’s a family. It builds your character. Football has made me who I am today. There can still be things done to give that back to someone.”
Back in the summer, the L. A. Roosevelt kids remained hopeful as case numbers were rising during the pandemic’s second wave. The cool thing for Roosevelt coach Aldo Parral was that he didn’t have to keep his players updated.
“They were paying attention to the numbers,” Parral said. “Every kid knew who the L. A. County health director was. And it’s funny because we coaches became teachers of health.”
On July 20, the word came down from the California Interscholastic Federation that fall sports would be postponed to the spring semester, with its football championships scheduled for April.
In August, when Roosevelt players saw high school football games aired on national TV, they had questions.
“Why are they playing and we’re not?” one player asked.
Parral was now functioning as a civics teacher, trading in his whistle for a government textbook. Fortunately he’d spent some years in Roosevelt’s social studies department.
“Look,” Parral recalls saying, “we live in a Democratic state. They live in a Republican state.”
Parral may have oversimplified it a bit, as some blue states did choose to play. The states that approved a fall season each had their own method of trying to fit in a season with disruptions.
In Iowa, the state ruled that if a school did not offer in- person learning then it could not compete in sports. The Roosevelt Roughriders knew there was a possibility the Des Moines Public Schools would choose to go all virtual, but they scheduled two games in August before the fall semester began, trying to stay optimistic.
The Roughriders lost their first game but showed promise, then roughed up fellow city school East 60- 10. The next week, they were informed that DMPS was offering no in- person classes. Their football season was over.
Roosevelt coach Mitch Moore was incensed that the f ive innercity Des Moines schools were the only teams in the state that could not play. Moore says that many schools in Iowa offered in- person classes but had their football players attend online to keep them COVID- free.
“We’re actually the safest school in the state, and they didn’t let us play?” Moore said. “For our kids who have been treated unfairly because of the color of their skin or where they live, it just seemed like, man, there’s another unfortunate situation for us.”
The Roughriders organized a protest with the other city schools. In September, they marched together to the governor’s office. The Roosevelt players wore their Black Lives Matter sweatshirts, and the cheerleaders came along, too.
“Everybody in the city felt the pain of our kids not getting an opportunity to compete and play,” Moore said.
After case numbers improved through the fall, DMPS opened up in- person learning in mid- November. Promptly, Moore seized the moment and scheduled a game for Nov. 17 against North, hoping to give the seniors one last shot.
Senior cornerback Jakari Bradley had taken advantage of the team’s two previous games to earn a scholarship offer from Division II Upper Iowa. Moore told him that Iowa State of the Big 12 Conference had shown interest but wanted to watch him play again.
The week before the North game, DMPS said it was going back to virtual learning. The game was canceled.
“Could have changed my whole life,” Bradley said.
In Johnstown, Colo., Roosevelt quarterback Brig Hartson’s senior dream went like this: Beat the rival Mead Mavericks. Win the school’s f irst state championship. Celebrate with his football- crazy town nestled in the cornfields an hour’s drive north of Denver.
At first, Colorado’s state association planned to push the season back to the spring. But Roosevelt coach Lane Wasinger didn’t just accept that edict. He was one of many coaches who applied pressure on social media.
One September morning as the team arrived for weight training, Wasinger told them that the state reversed course and they would have a fall season after all. He had a schedule printed up and everything.
“We all went into the parking lot and were jumping around,” Hartson said. “To see a schedule on paper, it was kind of hard to believe for a second.”
In South Dakota, despite the state’s status as a COVID hotbed, there wasn’t much doubt about whether there would be a fall season. That was great for the Sioux Falls Roosevelt Rough Riders, who were ranked No. 1 in the preseason.
They still had strict protocols to follow, which led to some uncomfortable conversations.
“Some of that just comes from what their belief system is at home, how they felt their rights were being controlled a little bit,” said Roosevelt coach Kim Nelson, the state’s all- time wins leader. “We had some guys that maybe didn’t always follow the guidelines, but I would say close to 90% were pretty good.
“It was hard because we really had to talk a lot about our civil rights and individual rights, and the people that lost family members were very adamant about wearing masks and trying to get everyone else to do the same.”
Sioux Falls Roosevelt has 2,600 kids, a thousand of whom chose virtual learning. The school requested that students who attended in person wear a mask, but there was so much blowback from parents that Roosevelt made a list of kids who did not have to wear a mask. The mask- free students in each classroom were isolated into a different area from the kids who wore masks.
The Rough Riders took a 7- 0 record into the state semifinals. It was then that Nelson received the news that the mothers of two of his offensive linemen tested positive and another lineman tested positive after interacting with a student who did not wear a mask in class.
Without three big guys up front, Roosevelt lost in the semifinals. Nelson did not blame his team’s COVID situation, but it certainly did not help.
Overall, Nelson felt the season was a success and important for the mental health of his players.
That’s how Hartson would come to see it, too, as his dream unfolded in front of him and became reality. Johnstown Roosevelt upset Mead, the team Hartson had been wanting to beat since he was a little boy first putting on pads and a helmet, and it didn’t matter that only 150 fans could attend the game because of restrictions.
“Holy cow, they were just as loud as we needed them to be,” Hartson said.
Before long, the Johnstown faithful f igured out a way to get around the rules. They stacked hay bales on semi trucks outside the stadium so people could see the game from a distance.
Roosevelt advanced to the school’s third state title game appearance. Team parents signed a petition to be allowed to attend the game in Pueblo, and once again, the state eased restrictions under pressure.
The Rough Riders lost to Durango 14- 7.
“These last few months have been some of the most memorable of my life,” Hartson said. “I feel a lot of remorse for those teams that don’t get to experience this.”
When L. A.’ s Rough Riders f inally got the go- ahead from the school district to work out together in November, Parral felt immense relief.
“For the f irst time in eight months, they got to be teenagers,” Parral said.
“I hadn’t been that happy in a long time,” said offensive tackle Benjamin Reyes. “Not being able to practice, it takes a toll. Being home all day, it’s really not for me.”
As the case numbers began to creep up around Thanksgiving, though, Parral knew they were operating on borrowed time. In early December, it was back to Zoom workouts Monday to Thursday.
Now, once again, the Rough Riders can only watch the numbers and wait. “I know the number is going to go up during Christmas,” Avalos said.
This Christmas in San Antonio, Coleman was able to look back on a special senior season that ended with a second- round playoff loss — and an invitation to play next year at nearby Division III Trinity University.
Coleman always saw himself as a leader, but playing this pandemic season forced him to prove it.
“A lot of people in my age group like to take things as a joke, and COVID is a big one,” Coleman said. “Some people just don’t believe that it’s real. There’s definitely been a lot of work for the leaders on our team, because if we don’t wear our masks or do everything perfectly then other people will feel like they have the right to not do it because Dewayne didn’t do it.”
For now, L. A. Roosevelt’s seniors aren’t being given that kind of growth opportunity. And for now, they don’t know whether they’ll be able to play in “The Classic” against Garfield and avenge a decade of defeat.
“Most of my family went to Roosevelt,” Avalos said, “so playing in ‘ The Classic’ is one of the best things that ever happened to me. Being told every year that we’re losers, that we won’t ever beat them again, I want to beat Garfield for my senior year.”
The dream lives on, into 2021. All the Rough Riders need is a chance to make it come true.