“That’s important to us,” the 13-year-old told me on a recent afternoon. “We don’t want to feel alone. We want to know we got people behind us.”
A video that appeared on Instagram in recent days shows the football players who attend John Hayden Johnson Middle School discussing how they might raise enough money to rent two buses to bring friends and family members to their game Sept. 9. In the video, one student agrees to design a logo that could go on T-shirts to spread awareness of the need. A few students volunteer to handle marketing. Another student offers to help with budgeting.
Without context, the video is unremarkable. Students at schools across the nation raise money for activities all the time.
But with context, the video offers a glimpse into an effort that is changing young lives in a city that is losing too many.
The middle-schoolers aren’t just striving and thriving in a city that is struggling to control youth violence. They are doing that while attending a public school in Southeast Washington that is surrounded by that violence. They are defying odds, even as they watch those odds increase against them.
“We’re just good kids,” Christopha said. “Our team doesn’t get in trouble. We want people to respect us.”
The eighth-grader has a 4.0 GPA and is not the only team member to consistently make the honor roll. Players are expected to maintain at least a 3.0 GPA and they attend a mandatory study hall daily to help them achieve that.
The team also rarely loses. The last time the school’s football team lost a game was in 2018. In recent years, they have won eight city championships. In 2022, they ranked first in the nation for middle schools.
Despite those achievements, you probably haven’t heard of the Johnson Panthers. They haven’t received much media coverage or public support outside of their community. That lack of attention, and the message it sends, is one of the reasons longtime D.C. activist Ron Moten posted that video of the team on his Instagram page.
“If we don’t give our youngins attention when they do what’s right, why should they?” Moten told me. He said the video has already helped the team raise money for those buses to West Virginia. “We don’t want them to go there by themselves. We want them to have some people cheering for them and rooting for them. We want to let them know: When you do what’s right, the community supports you, you do get attention. They need to know that, because right now, it’s cool to be a fool.”
Right now, much of the city’s attention is directed at young people who are committing violent crimes and falling victim to them. This year, the city has seen an increase in shootings and homicides, with more young people killed so far than in all of 2022. Moten said what’s happening at Johnson could serve as a model for other schools. He recently arranged for members of the football team to speak with the city’s new police chief, Pamela A. Smith. The students showed up wearing ties.
“We set the bar too low for our young people,” Moten said. “If you love them, you can set the bar high.”
Johnson Athletic Director Michael Sharrieff, who is known to many as “Coach Mike,” has worked at the school for 22 years. In that time, he said, the football team has won 158 games and lost only 24. But that’s not what makes him proudest.
“More importantly, we have produced some incredible young men,” he said. “I tell them, ‘The world is a lot bigger than the football field. I want you prepared for the world.’”
He has watched some students go on to play sports in college and he has seen others become police officers, firefighters and military service members. He has also attended the funerals of former players. Over the weekend, he received a call from a mother asking if he could frame her son’s former jersey. That’s how he found out the teenager was gone.
“Unfortunately, we still lose some,” Sharrieff said. “We still lose some because the streets are what they are. … We’re living through one of the most volatile times in our existence. It’s not the number of people killed. It’s who is getting killed today. It’s old people. It’s young people. In the past, if you weren’t involved, you weren’t involved. Today, we’re all involved.”
In any community, it matters if parents attend their children’s events. But Sharrieff said the ever-present threat of loss in the neighborhoods where his players live and attend school places an added importance on showing up.
“I believe that if you lose a child, what’s going to help you through it is if you don’t have to say, ‘I wish I would have. I wish I would have gone to football games. I wish I would have gone to practice. I wish I would have taken the time to see what everybody else saw in my child,’” he said.
He said he tells his players’ family members to imagine that he offered them free tickets to see the Commanders play: “Everybody would take a ticket and go to the game, and not one Commander would turn around and look for you in the stands. But when your kids turn around on the football field, they are looking for you.”
While the buses are an immediate need for the team, they are not the only need. More children than ever have expressed an interest in joining the football team, Sharrieff said. They used to have about 30 players. Now, they have more than 60. What they don’t have is enough uniforms or equipment for everyone.
Peggy Williams, whose grandson is on the team, started volunteering with the athletic department after she saw how hard the coaches and players were working. She said the students spend their school days and weekends trying to improve their skills and their lives, but they need people outside their neighborhoods to notice them.
“This program needs the community,” she said. “These boys deserve more. Not just because of their environment, but because they want more for themselves.”
They want to know that when they look up and around, they won’t find the stands empty.
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