Southwest’s Surprising Football Team May Be a Gang the Neighborhood Needs

You’ve heard of best-kept secrets? File this under easiest-kept, because it is almost too easy to conceal the Los Angeles Southwest College football program.

The news coming out of Southwest’s neighborhood just south of Imperial Highway and east of Western Avenue is mostly awful. It is dominated by four items: gangs, guns, drugs, death.

Sound familiar?

If so, it’s probably news that Southwest could equal its best-ever record of 6-4 when it visits Moorpark on Saturday night.

Southwest might also earn a junior college bowl bid if the 5-4 Cougars (4-4 in the Western State Conference) beat Moorpark and Harbor College beats Santa Barbara.

That’s an unlikely scenario. But not as unlikely as word of a junior college football team, sewn together by students from hellish backgrounds, overshadowing sordid stories about devilish crime in the City of Angels.

Southwest operates in a district that draws students from Los Angeles high schools such as Washington, Locke and Jordan. Many of these feeder schools have contingents of top-flight athletes. Southwest football Coach Henry Washington says his sport is developing some of those athletes into a gang of top-flight people as well.

“We work hard with our kids to do well in football and to do well out on the street,” Washington says. “We have some solid citizens, and that is what our program is about.”

Citizen A: Freddie Leslie. Position: running back. High School: Washington. Future major: English. Hobby: Writing poetry. Background: Longtime friends sell drugs, steal for a living. He lives in a Baldwin Hills apartment building near where two people were recently shot.

“Five or six people died in the last two weeks,” said Leslie. “Lately that’s all they’ve been doing is shooting. I grew up with them. I grew up right down the street and I knew Southwest was here the whole time. People are really here to learn and that is how you forget about what is happening on the outside.”

Citizen B: Russell Richardson. Position: linebacker. High School: Huntington Park. Future major: business. Background: A close friend, who had intended to play football at Southwest, was killed in a drive-by shooting. The incident left Richardson, who has moved since, depressed--and convinced that he would leave Los Angeles at some point.

“Being in school and playing football keeps you sane,” Richardson said. “I would rather be in here struggling if I have to struggle than be outside wondering if someone is going to shoot me or what is going to happen to me the next minute. I feel safer here.”

Citizen C: Anthony Reid. Position: defensive back. High School: Inglewood. Future major: journalism. Background: Lives near school at 76th and Western and fills his day with school, football and work at a shoe store in Hawthorne Mall.

“There is not time to hang out and get in trouble,” said Reid, a 5-10, 170-pound sophomore. “But watching TV, that is what gets me. (The danger) is getting closer and closer.”

Citizen D: Herman Tatum. Position: quarterback. Honors: leads the Western State Conference in passing with 1,675 yards and 13 touchdowns. High School: Los Angeles. Future major: mathematics. Backround: Enrolled at L.A. City College in 1986 but transferred to Valley when LACC dropped football. Tatum, however, felt uncomfortable with Valley’s program and asked for his release, but the head coach refused. So he sat out a year and played at Compton in 1987 before coming to Southwest. He believes members of Southwest’s team recognize dangers lurking in their area.

“Everybody is starting to realize that the fast life is no good because everybody is dying,” Tatum says.

Washington believes it is essential that the neighborhoods they came from know what is happening now in the lives of citizens like Leslie, Richardson, Reid and Tatum.

“Let the youngsters hear that one of Russell’s friends got killed and he felt it was safer to be in school,” said Washington.

Those listening also might be interested to hear that Southwest’s football team is winning despite losing its program two years ago to budget cuts.

Tatum and Leslie are largely responsible for the turnaround. The 6-foot, 190-pound quarterback is tied for the conference lead in total yardage with Bakersfield’s Stan Green. Leslie, a 5-9, 180-pound speed merchant, is third in the WSC in all-purpose yardage with 1,072. And if Leslie had not turned an ankle in the first quarter of a 35-7 loss to Valley, the Cougars might have reversed a 10-7 half-time deficit and upset the Monarchs.

“If a few of our individuals are on, we just flat out can get after it,” Washington said.

After coaching football for eight years at Jordan High, Washington took the head coaching job at Southwest in 1981. Three years later the Cougars finished 6-4 “and really a step away from 9-1 if it hadn’t been for injuries,” Washington said. The following year, the Los Angeles community college system said it would soon drop football at some schools and enrollment plummeted at Southwest. The Cougars won only 2 games against 8 losses, the same record Washington had his first season.

The next year, 1986, football disappeared at Southwest.

“That just devastated this program,” Washington remembered. “You have a hard time convincing kids to come here anyway because surrounding schools can say, ‘You don’t want to go to Southwest, they don’t have any money,’ and now they drop the program and that just confirms what they are saying.”

When football was reinstated last season, a team primarily of freshmen finished 3-7. This year, though freshmen still outnumber sophomores 2 to 1, the Cougars have matured. “When we first came here,” said Richardson, a 6-2, 185-pound sophomore, “most of us had been playing high school football. It was just run and tackle. Some games I was into it and some it was a mystery to me. Now it is fairly easy because I understand more about the game.”

Except for a last-minute Santa Barbara field goal that beat the Cougars, they have lost only to state and national powers Valley, Bakersfield and Glendale. And they refused to beat themselves in a 14-9 victory over Santa Monica.

“They forced us to try and beat them,” said Santa Monica Coach Ralph Vidal. The Cougars never turned the ball over and never were flagged for a holding penalty. “We have more physical talent than them and should have been able to beat them,” Vidal added. “Their coach has really done a magnificent job.”

Washington will accept the praise lightly. He likens himself to Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka because neither smiles on mistakes. Positive reinforcement is not Washington’s way.

“During the game I do a lot of yelling and screaming,” Washington says. “Some kids get out there and lose their concentration, and that just bugs me in the worst way. But the kids know I am emotional and that after the ballgame it’s over and we are friends again.”

Tatum, who claims he doesn’t care where he plays next year “as long as they pass the ball,” was often on the receiving end of Washington’s tirades early in the season. “I just took it as a motivation thing,” Tatum said, “like I am not going to do this over again because it is a stupid mistake.”

Like Reid, Tatum and Richardson work at Hawthorne Mall after school. Richardson is an assistant manager at Baskin Robbins.

“I’m an ice-cream scooper,” Tatum said.

All three have been confronted at work by members of opposing teams with intimidation on their minds. Usually, though, the encounters are friendly. Richardson even plays basketball with some football opponents.

Leslie, who hopes to attend Stanford, is just thankful friends involved with gangs are his friends wherever he goes. “They understand what I am doing,” he says. “They even keep on pushing me to keep on what I’m doing, even come and support me. But I am not going to be out on the street talking to them when (gangbangers) come by and notice them and shoot me. I just go in the house and let them do what they have to do on the outside.”

As a kid growing up in Watts, Washington faced similar danger. It didn’t faze him. “You knew,” Washington said, “where to go and where not to go.”