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City Shots: The Big Team
Thursday, September 27, 2001
This is what it's like when the "big team" (ages 13-14) comes out to play on Saturdays at the Swamp, home of the Garfield Gators midget football association.
Hands clasped. Coming out in a shower of fireworks and music. Announcers introducing them like they're a bunch of NFL stars. Lot of noise from a big crowd. Taking the field in a haze of smoke.
One reason the Gators have become such a big deal in Garfield is head coach Anthony "Tone" Walls, front and center in the photo, flanked by guard/defensive end LaMont Frazier on the left and his son Tone Jr., a running back, on the right.
Watch the coach on the sidelines or listen to him talk about his players, and you know right away that he has no intention of letting them fail, on or off the field. He's intense.
"We play hard-nosed, fundamental football. We just get it done," says Walls, 33, who played football at Peabody High School and Waynesburg College. "I run high school and college plays. We got over 200 plays -- these kids remember them. We have nine or 10 different formations.
"We are just totally committed to what we do. We practice hard, we train hard, we are disciplined. If you aren't going to follow the rules, you aren't gong to be a Garfield Gator. Other teams are disruptive, fight. We walk away.
"From the first day, I have kids telling me, 'I never worked out this hard before.' "
It was too hard at first for Joshua Farris, 13.
"I started on the Termites when I was 9. My first year, I quit because I couldn't take it. Everybody was bigger and hit harder than me. I couldn't take it. And my mom wanted me to quit. Then the Termites won the championship and I was mad. I came back."
He's a captain this year. "When you become a captain on our football team, that means you are a leader. I stepped up and was a leader."
Walls was one of the founders of the Gators eight years ago.
"At that particular time, the gang thing was real heavy," said Walls, an outreach worker at the Homewood-Brushton YMCA. With the help of his boss, Executive Director Olivia Jones, he scraped together money, came up with the name Gators, and got together teams for midget league football.
There's not much of a line between his day job and the one that fills up much of the rest of his life.
"I tell you what, it coincides with the job I do. I'm an outreach worker. I do a lot of counseling, a lot of kids call me up, come to my house. With my job, I'm allowed into schools. I talk to principals, vice principals. It's a constant thing. It's not just football."
If someone is having problems, he knows it.
"Most of these kids I've known since they were born. As quiet as it's kept, I'm usually on it. If it does slip by me, their parent will call me."
And the consequences might come on the practice field, say in the form of 200 yards of bear walk (walk on hands and feet, knees can't touch the ground). A coach might call out a player and discipline him for what he's done or not done at school, at home, on the street.
"Yeah, we say it out loud, in front of others. We don't hide it because we're family," says Walls.
Jones has known Walls for 15 years and says that he doesn't give up on people. She remembers a boy who was in and out of the juvenile justice system and was incarcerated while in high school. The day he got out, Walls was there to walk him back to school. The young man is now in college.
"He's not going to give up on them," she says. "Other people give up, but he refuses."
Walls sees the Gators organization as a fraternity.
"We say, 'Gators for life,' from that opening day. I believe that. In years to come, other Gators are going to help Gators get jobs. I believe that. This is way more than football. We are teaching them to be excellent young men."
City Shots is following the Gators during their season this fall. Scores from Saturday's game against the Hill District Disciples were Twerps, 20-0; Termites, 12-0; Mighty Mites, 13-6; Midgets (the Big Team), 21-0.
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