The Sun's Kevin Van Valkenburg and Lem Satterfield discuss the series
Sun reporters Kevin Van Valkenburg and Lem Satterfield talk about their special series on Edmondson's football team.
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About the seriesKevin Van Valkenburg and Lem Satterfield began reporting this series in mid-September of 2006. Along with photographer Andre Chung, they spent the entire week with the Red Storm football team leading up to the Edmondson-City College game on Sept. 23, 2006. They interviewed players, other students, coaches, teachers, administrators and family. They witnessed nearly every scene in these stories while driving to school with the players, attending classes and school events with them, observing practices, hanging out in the locker room, visiting players' homes and watching the big game. Additional follow-up reporting was done throughout the season. In certain instances, players and coaches were asked to recount their thoughts during a scene after it had taken place. Van Valkenburg wrote the stories. |
Sun reporters Kevin Van Valkenburg and Lem Satterfield talk about their special series on Edmondson's football team.
An examination of the coaching philosophy of Edmondson's Dante Jones.
Sun follow-up
It's a quiet, uneventful afternoon at Edmondson-Westside High, except for one thing. Dante Jones' cell phone won't stop ringing. And ringing.
The big game: Part 1 of 5
Next week, millions will tune in to the Super Bowl, attracted as much by an athletic contest as a spectacle saturated with glitz, glamour and excess.
The big game: Part 2 of 5
At 7:04 a.m. Tuesday, 17-year-old Sterling Jones, bleary-eyed and shirtless, opens the front door of his rowhouse on Wheeler Avenue in West Baltimore. He squints into the sunshine, nods his head, then disappears back inside.
The big game: Part 3 of 5
The classic canon, etched forever into football's mythology, states that no team achieves success unless composed of 22 equally important parts. No one man is more vital than the next, no individual player's role more critical to the outcome than another's. If one consistently falters, they all falter.
The big game: Part 5 of 5
Sterling Jones sits on a concrete ledge above rusty metal bleachers at Edmondson-Westside High School watching the school band labor through a last rehearsal before tonight's football game. His feet dangle over the ledge, but it is hardly an image of relaxation. He nervously rocks back and forth.
There are images I won't soon forget:
It wasn't any great sense of prognostication that led Gerrard Shelley to videotape all the games for the Edmondson Red Storm's championship season. It was just something he'd done every year since 2001.
Edmondson High football coach Dante Jones, whose team won the Class 2A championship last fall, said "20 players will be playing college football next fall," having received full scholarships or other financial assistance. Among them, Jerome Baskerville, Kyle Jackson, Sterling Jones, Tariq Jones and Dujuan Smith are headed to Bowie State on scholarships, as are Ryun Chandler and Kareem Damon to West Virginia Tech. Coach Jones said Alge Berry, Dionta Cox and Darren Johnson will play at Saint Augustine's in Raleigh, N.C.
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