BREAKDOWN: A Season of Gang Warfare

Crime, drugs and gang violence confront teenagers in Chelsea, Massachusetts every day. In his new book, BREAKDOWN: A Season of Gang Warfare, High School Football, and the Coach Who Policed the Streets, Bob Halloran presents a vivid look at how youth in this troubled neighborhood turn to football and an inspiring coach to escape the dangers they constantly face.

A silver-haired man in a yellow windbreaker stood among the small bleacher crowd looking out over a high school football field on a cool, September evening. Beyond the field where the lights yielded to the darkness, the leaves were dropping much like the children of Chelsea, Massachusetts, pulled down by forces they couldn’t control, drifting aimlessly. But for the first time in a long time, the clean, crisp spring-like air carried a whisper of hope. It was faint, but it was obvious, because in the tiny city of Chelsea, hope didn’t linger very often.

“I’ll tell you what these boys needed,” the silver-haired man said to no one in particular. “They needed a man to teach them how to be men. And they got the right guy.”

As he spoke, a large light-skinned black man emerged from the Chelsea High School locker room. He was the pied piper with seventy wide-eyed boys falling in line behind him. They’d follow him off the Tobin Bridge that connected Chelsea to Boston if that’s what he told them to do, but the coach stared into their eyes – eyes of seventy boys stumbling along on their journey into manhood – and closed out his impassioned pregame speech with: “Football is life, fellas.”
The words were right out of the coaches’ handbook, passed down from Knute Rockne to Lou Holtz to Bill Parcells, and so on. The phrase was the mantra of every coach attempting to motivate a team, or to use football as a teaching tool. Sometimes it worked. On the right group of boys or men, perhaps desperate for leadership and direction, the coach’s words could be inspiring and profound, but as this coach turned to leave the shadows of the small, foul-smelling team sanctuary, he knew his words were still hanging in the air, hovering, the echo fading before the true meaning of his metaphor was fully appreciated. Seventy boys heard the words. They all listened. A few understood. Most couldn’t help but disagree.

The coach had repeated this axiom dozens of times before. The point was simple. Football is about achieving success through hard work. Sure, you get knocked down a lot, but you get right back up and go to work all over again. It’s about commitment and pride and teamwork, and it’s about knowing your responsibilities and doing your job. It’s about leadership and, the coach thought, it was about time these kids started getting the message.

But no, football wasn’t like life for these boys. Football, they thought, is fun. And it’s fair. It’s rewarding and controllable, and it’s hopeful. Life, on the other hand, is none of those things. Not in Chelsea. Not in their neighborhoods. Not in their homes.

“Around here, it’s like you have to worry about things,” Orlando Echevarria said. He was a senior and one of the team’s captains. His loyalty to the coach and his Red Devil teammates was only as strong as the ties he still felt to the Bloods, the gang he joined when he was still in grade school. His Blood brothers still tried to pull him back and drag him down into the street life. But they were his friends. That was his life. He loved to play football, but the coach was wrong. Football is not life. It is merely a necessary distraction for the continuation of life, because if Orlando didn’t have football, he knew he would be either dead or in jail.

“In some cities, you don’t have to worry,” Orlando continued. “You always gotta worry what colors you wear. That matters. Around here, people have got jumped because of the colors they wear, just wearing the color red. It’s one of those cities where you have to worry, and you have to know how to fight. That’s the way I see it. You have to know how to fight or you have to carry something. There’s going to come a point when you are going to have to use that, and if you don’t have that, then it’s going to be tough luck for you.”

Orlando was the coach’s single greatest challenge. To keep him off the streets, to get him to stay in school and to graduate was not only a more significant task than winning a Massachusetts High School Super Bowl, it was far more difficult. And it was made all the more difficult because Orlando was not the only one.

There was the boy whose brother was wanted by the police for assault and kidnapping, the boy whose father was a heroin addict and died of AIDS, the boy whose mother was a prostitute, the boy whose sister was a prostitute, the boy whose father was a recovering methamphetamine addict, the boy whose mother recently had left him and his sister with Down’s syndrome to take up with a drug dealer in New Bedford, the boy who received protective immigration status as he fled from war-torn Bosnia, the boy from Africa whom the coach called “Midnight” because his skin was so black, and all the boys from broken homes where the parent who stayed didn’t speak English.

As challenging as Orlando would be, his story only barely stood out above the myriad of unstable home lives faced by his teammates. Each of the Chelsea Red Devils was required to sidestep the landmines strewn about his home, his neighborhood, and his city. Not one was immune to the influence of violence, or drugs, or the harsh realities of a fatherless home, but Orlando did stand out because of his size, his talent, and his potential for both good and bad. At 6’4”, 230 pounds, blessed with athletic grace and speed and good hands, Orlando had the potential to earn a college scholarship as a tight end. He also had the potential to be just another Chelsea kid who fell through the cracks of the city. He could have risen above or he could have fallen back into the gang life. Orlando’s physical gifts were his way out. A better life was there for the taking, but the gang life was always there threatening to take it all away.

From Breakdown-A Season of Gang Warfare, High School Football, and The Coach Who Policed The Streets by Bob Halloran ©2010. Reprinted by permission of Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.