Fort Drum Pee Wee football shoots for title

FORT DRUM — They attend different schools, hail from across the country and have lived all over the world. But the kids assembled under bright lights on a grassy field Wednesday night shared two things that have brought them together: a parent in the Army and a love for football.

The Fort Drum Mountaineers Pee Wee football team is heading Saturday to Jackson, N.J., to compete in the Pop Warner Eastern Region Championship game, after winning the Greater Watertown Pop Warner Super Bowl earlier this month and defeating the Chittenango Bears on Sunday in Syracuse.

At Wednesday night's practice — the team's last before the championship — head coach John C. McAlister said military kids are used to moving and meeting new people, a quality that likely helped the 26 nine- to 12-year-olds cohere quickly and work together as a team.

The children attend different school districts in the area, and many just met for the first time in August when they started playing together. But Mr. McAlister said they came together quickly, learned the fundamentals of the sport and continued to improve throughout the season. The team is undefeated for the season at 10-0.

And they did that even as parents came and went, leaving and returning from deployments throughout the season, he said.

Linebacker Mitchell Hale, 11, said the team's accomplishments didn't surprise him much, but he was still excited to head to the championship.

Fullback Devin Gray, also 11, sounded like a hardened old pro talking about the team's strategy and what he enjoyed about football. The Mountaineers aimed at "keeping the (other team's) defense on their heels," he said.

The sport appeals to him because "I'm a rough kid," he said. "I like to hit people."

Advancing to the regional championship was an important accomplishment for the team because it shows people that "Just because we're in the military doesn't mean we can't come together and do something big," Gray said.