Urban high school athletes experience rural life

WELLSVILLE, Kan

They woke up in separate twin beds, in a log cabin on a farm 50 miles away from the police sirens that often zing through their Kansas City, Mo., neighborhood.

It was around 7 a.m. when Darrell Cage, Donald Stephenson and Rolando Sawyer walked into the kitchen and saw their football coach, Brandon Smith, frying hash browns, scrambling eggs and cooking sausage.

Smith looked up at the boys, all of whom live in the urban core -- none of whom had ever been to a farm or ridden a horse before.

How'd you sleep?

"You kidding?" Rolando replied. "We slept great. It's quiet out here. No gunshots, no police, no noise."

It certainly is a long way from the boys' neighborhood to this log cabin, which Smith and some friends built by hand. Smith invited the guys out to his farm -- 10 acres outside Wellsville -- on a recent weekend to hang out, ride horses, and, in Smith's words, "See that there's something else."

And if it helps win a few games, that's OK, too.

Smith grew up on a Louisiana farm; almost all his players were raised in midtown Kansas City. Smith talks with a southern drawl and listens to country; his players often recite the lines from rap songs.

Smith won't wear his cowboy boots to practice, but he won't pretend to be someone he isn't, either. His players like that. Rolando, a senior, said the players are working harder for Smith than they did any of the recent predecessors.

Before money ran out a few years back, Smith ran a therapeutic horse-riding program for troubled children. The three players out here are all good youths with good grades and plans for college, but Smith figured they'd like riding the horses all the same.

The teammates showered after the game and hopped in Smith's green Ford pickup truck and made the 45-minute drive out to their coach's farm.

Donald is a sophomore and the only nonsenior invited out here. He's a thoughtful youth, keeps mostly to himself. He's also an A-student who wants to attend law school and eventually become a judge.

Donald admits he didn't think Smith was "for real" at first, didn't think enough players would respect Smith because of the different backgrounds. Donald thinks different now. Smith let them sleep in his sons' beds, cooked them food and helped them ride their horses over a creek. Those memories will stick much longer than the proper execution of "12 dive" or "Central 22."

"That's what he wanted," Donald said. "He wanted us to know that he's just a man. He's coach Smith, but he wanted us to know him as Brandon Smith, too."

Smith wanted this to be a relationship-building thing. He wanted to help build better youths, not necessarily better football players. Smith hand-picked this group because they are among the hardest workers.

Rolando is outgoing and among the team's best playmakers as a receiver, defensive back and punt returner. He wants to play professional football someday. Darrell likes the camaraderie that goes with high school football. That's one reason he's stuck with it this long and now plays the line on both sides of the ball.

Smith is not Mother Teresa. He loves his work but grows tired of the inherent obstacles in building a good football program at an urban-core school. He makes no secret he's open to jobs at better-funded and better-supported schools. If he's still at Central in two years, he said it will be because he hadn't had a satisfactory offer and because he wants to stick around for Donald's senior year.

"I'm country and I'm white and I talk with a drawl, but I was real to these kids, and they respected that," Smith said. "We have this perception sometimes -- and I say 'we' because I had this same perception -- that inner-city kids just run amok. That's not true. That was just my ignorance, thinking that. These are good kids with parents who care about them."

Less than a half-hour into his ride, Rolando looked like a pro, even doing a little shimmy shake while weaving through cones Smith had set up. He looked over at Darrell, his 5-foot-11, 240-pound teammate with cornrows, who was struggling to make his horse -- which happened to be pregnant -- do much of anything.

Smith told Darrell the horse needed a little kick on the side to get going. Darrell hesitated.

"I don't want to hurt the baby," he said.

Smith walked over, made a noise that only he and the horse understood, slapped the horse on the butt, and Darrell was moving.

Meanwhile, Donald controlled his horse as if he were playing Plinko on "The Price Is Right." Donald said left, the horse went right. Donald tried to ride through the cones Rolando had mastered, but the horse stopped at a fence corner, staring out at the pasture.

Smith smiled.

"Now you know what I feel like when I say, 'Donald, don't let that running back outside, Donald, contain that man,"' Smith said.

High school boys will never, ever, no matter what, admit they're scared of anything. So when they approached the horses for the first time, the acceptable adjective is "apprehensive."

"Look," Smith said, "Do you really think I would put you in a situation where you would get hurt?"

That was enough for Donald, who hopped on first, followed shortly by Darrell and Rolando. Within a few hours, they were comfortable enough in the saddle to go on a two-hour, 5-mile trail ride. They ate ham sandwiches when they returned and had to leave early in the afternoon so Rolando could be at work at KFC by 4 p.m.

By the time they packed into Smith's truck for the drive home, they had met their coach's wife and three sons, slept in his house, eaten his food and ridden and helped care for his horses.

Darrell was the first to be dropped off back in Kansas City. When the truck pulled into the neighborhood, a couple of police cars were parked outside a house down the street.

"Haven't seen one of those in a while," Darrell said.