As his team pulled into Dayton, Ohio at 4 a.m. one day in early April, the head coach of the South Shore Drill Team was confident his sleepy squad of 15 teenagers from some of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods had a shot at glory for the first time in nearly 20 years.
They had done everything he asked. They had worked hard in practice for months and now were ready to win the color guard world championship if they could complete one more task: block out the violence and struggle back home.
It would not be easy. There were 62 teams chasing the same dream, and the ghosts and hardships of the city had followed the Chicago squad on the road. The team barely had enough money for food and gas. Hotels were out of the question. In Dayton, a lucky few slept on air mattresses scattered across the gym of a Boys and Girls Club. But most of the team only had sheets and blankets, which they spread on the floor, including the coach, Michael Borum, 32. “I was right down there with them,’’ he said.
One of the team’s hardest-working and oldest members, Jeffrey Lovett, 20, who had been with the team since he was 9, could not make the trip. He was at home in the south suburbs nursing a gunshot wound to the stomach he suffered while trying to break up a fight at a party a few weeks before.
“The doctors said two more inches and I could have been dead,’’ he said. “But I ain’t a street guy so God spared my life.’’
The experience rattled his teammates.
“People only see the performances,’’ Borum said. “They don’t see what we go through to keep the kids off the street. They don’t see what the kids go through to stay off the streets.’’
In its 31-year history, the South Shore Drill Team has never really been about winning titles or glory. It has always been about keeping “at-risk youth’’ out of harm’s way. On April 8 it accomplished both.
For the second time in 19 years, the team from Chicago hoisted the championship trophy toward the roof of the University of Dayton Arena. The teenagers were giddy, including Rodney Nelson, 18, who wept “tears of joy.’’
“Holding that trophy up was amazing,’’ he said.
Moments later, Rodney’s sister, Ahliya, 16, a member of the girl’s drill team, weaved her way through the celebration and stood in front of her big brother. Ahliya also was crying.
“Quintin’s been shot,’’ she sobbed. “He’s dead.’’
Childhood Friends
Quintin Turner, 17, and Rodney Nelson grew up together in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. As boys they did everything together. They played basketball, walked to the lakefront, traveled downtown, dreamed of flying airplanes across oceans.
“I knew Quintin all my life,’’ Rodney said. “He was a great kid. Funny. Friendly. Full of energy.’’
As they got older, Rodney started “hanging with the wrong people, getting into trouble, which is easy to do where I come from.’’ Then he saw the South Shore Drill Team marching in a parade five years ago, its members throwing their mock rifles high into the air and deftly catching them as the crowd, especially the girls, cheered.
“To be honest, I mainly joined the drill team for the females at first,’’ Rodney said. “Then I started getting out of the neighborhood and it got to be a habit.’’
Rodney said he tried to recruit Quintin to join the team, but he had his own interests, his own plan for staying off the corner and alive.
“Me trying to do something positive with my life with the drill team–Quintin was doing the same thing playing football,’’ Rodney said.
Before leaving for Ohio, Rodney called Quintin and told him he was going to return home “a world champion.’’ Rodney was glad they talked. He had not seen much of his old friend in recent months because he had been busy practicing with the drill team.
When the team arrived in Dayton, it was 4 a.m. and the Boys and Girls Club they were to stay in was closed. The team had to sleep in its two rented vans for three hours before the club opened.
At the Friday night finals of the Winter Guard International Class A division, the team performed a skit called “Mind Heist,’’ based on a scene from the movie “Inception.’’
A review of the finals in the Winter Guard International newsletter said the performance by the team from South Shore was “eye popping’’ and included “one of the season’s most spectacular endings where high rifle aerials combined with leaps and somersaults, culminating in a perfect catch which had the entire arena on their feet.’’
Afterward, Elijah Thomas, 18, called Jeffrey Lovett in Chicago and told him the team had won. Lovett, whose stomach wound was closed with 29 staples, did not believe him at first, so Elijah put his cellphone on speaker mode so Lovett could hear the celebration.
“I’ll be at practice as soon as y’all get back,’’ Lovett told his teammates.
In Broad Daylight
Shortly before 5 p.m. on the day of the championship, Quintin Turner was walking with two friends near the post office at the corner of 46th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue when someone opened fire from a moving car, striking the three young men. Mr. Turner was hit in the face.
He was pronounced dead at 5:45 p.m. at a local hospital. The police said only that the case remains open.
Will Burns, the incoming alderman for the 4th Ward area, said police officials told him that there is an ongoing gang war in the neighborhood between two small crews.
“These guys are shooting in broad daylight,’’ Burns said. “These are clearly people who have no common sense or decency.’’
A few hours after Quintin was killed, word reached Dayton. Nelson’s sister got a call from a friend. She wanted to tell Rodney right away but Borum, the coach, asked her to wait. “Let him enjoy the moment,’’ he told her.
When she did tell Rodney, his tears of joy turned to “tears for my loss,” he said.
He retreated to a corner and wept. His teammates followed and encircled him.
“That made me break down even more,’’ Rodney said. “The drill team is my family and that love and comfort they showed made me cry. I told them if it wasn’t for me being there with them, I probably would have been with Quintin, getting shot.’’
Rodney said his friend was not involved in either of the warring gangs, but probably was walking with the two other young men for protection the day he was shot.
“Nobody likes to walk the streets alone,’’ he said. “Anything can happen. Now I think twice about walking with somebody else. Groups attract more attention. So walking by yourself might be the best thing.’’
Quintin’s funeral was Tuesday at Gatling’s Chapel on the Far South Side. Several teachers from the Tilden Career Community Academy where Quintin attended high school joined dozens of young people to say goodbye.
Rodney got up to speak but broke down before he was finished.
“When I saw that casket close, I felt nervous,’’ he said later. “I felt guilty. I wish I could have prevented it from happening.’’
After the funeral, Rodney’s mother dropped him off at the place he said he feels safest: drill team practice.
