Why are there so many players from a few Miami high schools starring in college and the NFL? Maybe because they spend their entire childhoods competing with one another.
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Joel Anderson / BuzzFeed
MIAMI — Treon Harris, a quarterback at Miami's Booker T. Washington High School, seems destined for college football fame and, possibly, professional riches. It's a path that's been traveled by South Florida predecessors like Chad Johnson, Willis McGahee, Andre Johnson, and this year's Heisman Trophy frontrunner, Teddy Bridgewater — all of whom played their way out of local leagues in the Miami area and into the NFL.
But first there's some business that needs tending to on this late-summer Friday night. Standing in Harris' way right now is Miami Central High School, and more specifically, the dynamic duo of Joseph Yearby and Dalvin Cook, who have dominated local youth leagues since they were around four feet tall and are now powering their own high school's rise to the top of the national polls.
Yearby and Cook have been beating Harris for years in those youth football leagues, which serve as feeders for Dade County's high school powerhouses and many of the nation's top college programs. Harris' record against Yearby and Cook is something like 0-and-always; in high school, Harris and Booker T. Washington came up a field goal short against Central in 2011, and a second-half BTW collapse in 2012 turned a 16-point halftime lead into an 11-point loss to the same foes.
This latest edition of the Booker T. Washington and Central rivalry — billed as the first-ever meeting of two schools from the same county both ranked No. 1 in one of the half-dozen national polls that compare high school teams — is Harris' last chance to notch that elusive win. "This one means the most to me," Harris says. "I love playing against [Yearby and Cook] because they're both great competitors. But this is my senior year and I can't go out like that."
According to one recruiting analyst, as many as 30 players at the game — including a few who aren't even starters on their respective teams — have the talent to play football at a major-college program. "This is such a fertile area for football talent," says Larry Blustein, who has covered high school football in South Florida since 1970. "Still, this will be the most prospect-rich game anyone will ever see."
People begin lining up outside of the gates of Nathaniel "Traz" Powell Stadium hours before the game. Tickets had been sold out since morning. In addition to long lines, fans are greeted by five TV trucks and dozens of police officers.
The crowd roars at at kickoff and follows the game closely. Every other play features a big hit that draws whoops and shouts. Things move fast. "Bring his ass down," shouts one of Central's assistant coaches, about Harris.
Even in football-mad Miami, this contest is accompanied by an unusual level of excitement. Traz Powell Stadium holds close to 10,000 spectators. By comparison, these teams played in front of crowds of fewer than 2,000 people — made all the more minuscule in the 70,000-seat Citrus Bowl — in their respective state championship games last winter in Orlando. Both schools' marching bands, which borrow heavily from the jazzed-up routines of historically black colleges, are lively. Both schools have close ties to the local black communities, and fans' loyalties go deep enough to get a little convoluted.
"My heart leans toward BTW because of the tradition of Overtown and Liberty City," says Joe Ellis...who's actually a 1968 graduate of Miami Northwestern High...and was seated on the Central side of the stadium. "I'm proud of what they're doing."
It's a game, sure. In a community where playing, coaching, and endlessly discussing football talent is a near-universal hobby, it's also an oversized family reunion.
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It's the Thursday morning before the game and about 10 people are waiting in line outside of the main office of Central High School, all of them looking to score some of the hottest tickets in town. Radio ads on hip-hop stations are hyping the event. Word is, even a few local celebrities plan to make an appearance.
Inside the office, the woman working the switchboard answers an avalanche of calls that have little to do with academics. "Tickets are $8." "They're on sale from 8 a.m. to noon on Friday." "Yes, kickoff is at 7:30 p.m." This goes on, virtually nonstop, for an hour. "You can buy as many tickets as you want, sir."
No less preoccupied is Central athletic director LaToya Williams. She's putting together a list of media outlets who had requested access ("There's a lot of y'all") and shepherding a pair of reps from Nike, among other tasks. A last-minute effort to get the game broadcast comes up empty. "This wasn't one of the weeks that airtime was available," Williams says. "But it doesn't bother us at all. It will still be a good show."
This sort of spotlight is essentially new to Central, which had a middling football program until a scandal at dominant local rival Northwestern High in 2007 rocked the balance of power among local schools. Then-Northwestern football head coach Roland Smith and his staff were removed, athletic director Gregory Killings resigned, and principal Dwight Bernard was indicted in connection with the alleged coverup of a report that star running back Antwain Easterling had sexual intercourse on-campus with a 14-year-old girl. (The school's administrators were later cleared of wrongdoing — Bernard was acquitted in April 2008 — and Easterling was allowed to enroll in a pretrial diversionary program before accepting a scholarship to Southern Mississippi.)
In the fallout, a former Northwestern assistant took the head coaching job at Central in 2008. He turned the Rockets into a juggernaut, compiling a record of 60-10 and winning two state championships in five years before leaving for a gig with the University of South Florida. That created an opening this year for Roland Smith, who'd spent the intervening five years teaching at a middle school, to return to big-time high school football.
"This was a good fit," Smith says. "It was easy to see Central was on the rise. And I've known all of these boys for most of their lives."
Smith has inherited a team coming off a Class 6A state championship and that many considered the nation's best, with senior running backs Yearby and Cook leading the way. And Central's rise wasn't just on the football field: President Obama visited the school in March 2011 to trumpet its academic improvement after years of failing test scores. It was quite a turnaround from 2009, when the state threatened to take over the school, which once had the worst academic record in Florida. "You are proving the naysayers wrong — you are proving that progress is possible," Obama told the audience that day.
Coach Roland Smith and the Rockets are part of that proof. Things have rarely been better at Central, and Friday would give them another stage to show as much to the world.
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