Go Hard or Go Home

Not normal

On April 26, 2019, the former quarterback of the record-setting Clairton Bears in Clairton, Pennsylvania, was shot dead a block from the stadium where he once led the team to its fourth straight state crown. He was twenty-three. At his funeral, a preacher pointed at Armani Ford's white casket and said, "This is not normal," that it was time to take back their city from those who thought killing was normal, that he was praying justice be done. In the crowd Ford's brother Isaiah "Zeke" Berry took him at his word.

They say that the only way for young Black men to escape Clairton is through football, and when you stop playing football, you die. Armani Ford was unemployed and living in Clairton when the killer struck—a killer who remains at large in this decaying mill town of six thousand that has sent dozens to Division One football programs and five to the National Football League (nfl). The Bears have racked up the most wins in Pennsylvania high school competition in the last fifteen years, even as the city itself has seen jobs go and storefronts close and the major employer, Clairton Coke Works, pollute its air. Armani Ford's best friend and high school teammate, Tyler Boyd, sat in Morning Star Baptist Church in gray suit and sunglasses to grieve Ford's death and then returned to Cincinnati, where he later penned a four-year, $43 million contract with the Bengals to keep catching footballs.

But this story is about the Bears still in Clairton, the ones who have neither earned nfl millions nor lost their lives to the streets. It's about people like head coach Wayne "Rinky" Wade, Clairton's native son who, like Boyd, left to play professional football until a career-ending injury sent him back home to a community where more than half of its children live below the poverty line and boys start playing football at age five. Instead of getting out, Wade is giving back.

Family, together

On July 23, 2019, hours after Boyd signs his multimillion-dollar contract extension and texts his former coach Wade with the news, the current Bears players work out in the weight room in Clairton's elementary building. The team has been gathering here since February. Now they're just two weeks away from preseason camp. The room is small, crammed with weight machines and dumbbells. Nineteen athletes are there, two-thirds of the team. They follow the workouts scribbled on the whiteboard. Music blasts from a speaker in the corner, creating a cushion of sound that covers everyone as they bend and lift.

Coach Wade is not there. He doesn't need to be. These boys have been training together since they could walk. They know what's expected of them. They are safest when they're working out here, among their brothers. It's when the music stops and they leave the weight room and football field that things get more complicated and dangerous. Many of them come from broken families, fathers missing in jail, or dead, mothers claimed by addiction. Sometimes, they live with extended relatives instead. Sometimes, the coaches are their father figures.

Lance Cash, a Clairton assistant who played in college with Coach Wade, recounts one time he had to miss practice because of a doctor's appointment. When he returned the next day, a player came up to him and asked where he'd been. Cash explained. The player said he'd been wanting to talk to him about something. Cash asked why didn't he ask another coach? He said, "No Coach Cash, I wanted to talk to you." So Cash tries to be at every practice because he knows it might make a difference for someone.

Like surrogate parents, Wade's assistants now circulate the room, offering encouragement and instructing players on how to position their bodies with the weights to get the best results, avoid injury.

Suddenly, the music ends. Coach Wade enters. The players stop what they're doing and stand in front of him. He wears a...