They had done everything he had asked. They had worked hard in practice for months and were ready to win the color guard world championship if they could complete one more task: block out the violence and struggle back home.
It would not be easy. There were 62 teams chasing the same dream, and the ghosts and hardships of the city had followed the Chicago squad on the road. The team barely had enough money for food and gas. Hotels were out of the question.
In Dayton, a lucky few slept on air mattresses scattered across the gym of a Boys and Girls Club. But most of the team, including the coach, Michael Borum, 32, had only sheets and blankets, which they spread on the floor.
“I was right down there with them,” Mr. Borum said.
One of the team’s hardest-working and oldest members, Jeffrey Lovett, 20, who had been with the team since he was 9, did not make the trip. He was at home in the South suburbs nursing a gunshot wound to the stomach that he sustained while trying to break up a fight at a party a few weeks before.
“The doctors said two more inches and I could have been dead,” he said. “But I ain’t a street guy, so God spared my life.”
The experience rattled his teammates.
“People only see the performances,” Mr. Borum said. “They don’t see what we go through to keep the kids off the street. They don’t see what the kids go through to stay off the streets.”
In its 31-year history, the South Shore Drill Team has never really been about winning titles or glory. It has been about keeping at-risk youth out of harm’s way. On April 8 it accomplished both.
For the second time in 19 years, the team from Chicago hoisted the championship trophy toward the roof of University of Dayton Arena. The teenagers were giddy, including Rodney Nelson, 18, who wept “tears of joy.”
“Holding that trophy up was amazing,” he said.
Moments later, Rodney’s sister, Ahliya, 16, a member of the girls’ drill team, weaved through the celebration and stood in front of her big brother. Ahliya also was crying.
“Quintin’s been shot,” she said, sobbing. “He’s dead.”
Childhood Friends
Quintin Turner, 17, and Rodney Nelson grew up together in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. As boys they did everything together. They played basketball, walked to the lakefront, traveled downtown, dreamed of flying airplanes across oceans.
“I knew Quintin all my life,” Rodney said. “He was a great kid. Funny. Friendly. Full of energy.”
As they got older, Rodney said, he started “hanging with the wrong people, getting into trouble, which is easy to do where I come from.” Then he saw the South Shore Drill Team marching in a parade five years ago, throwing mock rifles high into the air and deftly catching them as the crowd, especially the girls, cheered.
“To be honest, I mainly joined the drill team for the females at first,” Rodney said. “Then I started getting out of the neighborhood and it got to be a habit.”
Rodney said he had tried to recruit Quintin too, but he had his own interests, his own plan for staying off the corner and alive.
“Me trying to do something positive with my life with the drill team — Quintin was doing the same thing playing football,” Rodney said.
Before leaving for Ohio, Rodney called Quintin and told him he was going to return home “a world champion.” Rodney was glad they had talked. He had not seen much of his old friend in recent months because he had been busy practicing with the drill team.
When the team arrived in Dayton at 4 a.m., the Boys and Girls Club where they were to stay was closed.
The team had to sleep in its two rented vans for three hours, until the club opened.
At the Friday night finals of the Winter Guard International Class A division, the team performed a skit called “Mind Heist,” based on a scene from the movie “Inception.”
没有评论:
发表评论