East Side's demographics make it an outlier in its conference. The school, like the city, is 99 percent black; no other school in the eight-team Southwestern Conference is less than 55 percent white. Ninety-nine percent of East St. Louis Senior's students are eligible for the federally subsidized school lunch program — more than twice the rate at any other school in the conference. And the school's enrollment is dwarfed by that of its competition. Belleville East, the largest school in the Southwestern Conference, has 72 percent more students than East Side's 1,564. Granite City, the conference's second-smallest school, out-mans East St. Louis by 23 percent. The Flyers are at the lower end of the state's Class 6A division, but the team always petitions to play in the more competitive Class 7A.
At East Side there are half as many seniors as freshmen. The pull of the streets is the school's — and the Flyers' — top competition. When you're living with a sputtering infrastructure, vast poverty and ubiquitous crime, there's little incentive to put in fifteen hours of football practice each week and keep your grades high enough to maintain athletic eligibility.
Jennifer Silverberg
Jennifer Silverberg
With seven conference titles and twelve straight playoff appearances at East Side, Darren Sunkett is one of the best coaches in the region. But some wonder whether he is willing to win at any cost.
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Those who do choose to play it straight risk looking like punks.
"You got some people afraid of what their friends on the streets say if they come out for a sport," says Jeremy Nicholson, a senior running back and team co-captain. "People worry about, like, if you stop hanging with your friends on the street they say, 'Aw, you this,' and, 'Aw, you that,' and all types of names. Then you're into it with 'em. That's why some people just don't come out. A lot of people did sports in middle school and were good at it, smart and everything. Then when we got to high school, they started hanging around the wrong people and they just quit sports. It's crazy. They just gave up on it. But I understand. They probably got something going on in their life."
For instance, Bobby Moore, one of the team's top receivers, played varsity his freshman season but then got kicked out of school for a semester for fighting and other disciplinary infractions. He came back, though, spurred on in part by a visit from one of his coaches.
"I made a change from being an East St. Louis kid in the neighborhood to being a student-athlete," Moore says. "It changes my whole demeanor, my whole perspective on things. Now teachers see me in the hall, they see I'm a football player. They don't see me as a bad kid. I've seen some of the worst attitudes change, become dedicated, all 'cause of this — all 'cause of East St. Louis football.
"If I wasn't playing ball right now, I'd be all out in the neighborhoods hanging out with those bad groups, and something bad would probably happen, 'cause that's the way it is when you're in those situations."
When you're sprinting and hitting inside Clyde C. Jordan, the streets seem distant. The stadium is big and pristine, with brightly painted walls and well-tended turf, an oasis plunked down amidst a battered, crumbling landscape. The Oklahoma drills and summer conditioning sessions are grueling. But they're far easier than the empty stretches of time between practices.
"Everybody here wants it," Nicholson says of himself and his teammates. "We want it more in life than others. Like, sportswise, growing up down here in this city, outside of school we're always dealing with something in our family or whatever. We rely on sports to get us through. Get us through everything."
Those like Jeremy Nicholson who go all-in with the Flyers submit to hard discipline and a daily grind. But at the end of the four years, a path out of town opens up.
Fifteen of the seventeen seniors on last year's squad enrolled in college — some to continue with football, some solely to continue their education. (The school doesn't keep track of overall college placement numbers. And while the official graduation rate is 90 percent, that figure is based on senior-class enrollment — discounting the hefty attrition in the first three years.)
From the moment they first step into the locker room, players are immersed in college talk. Most dream of playing college ball, having seen older teammates go off to faraway campuses. They take note of the occasional scout at practice. They mind their grades and prepare for the ACTs. Sunkett and his coaching staff see to it that the die is cast long before a single football scholarship is awarded.
During a midseason practice, for example, assistant coach Shane Fast can be heard peppering senior safety Isaiah Doss about his preparation for the ACT.
"You gon' help me?" Doss asks with a grin.
"Yeah," says Fast. "You're gonna bring the food?"
"Nah, I bring the books, you bring the food," Doss replies.
Sunkett and his staff know that football is the motor that drives many of the kids past the potholes on the street and the drug dealers on the corner and the dropouts on the stoops, toward a life that seems otherwise unthinkable for a young man growing up in East St. Louis. He's hard on his players, shouts at them when they don't meet the intimidatingly high bar he sets for them. Just as they come to understand that he expects them to make those difficult catches or blocks or throws or tackles, they absorb the corollary — that he expects them to apply the same work ethic and confidence off the football field, and to achieve the same results.
