Maybe it was the pickle juice.
One week after the Mooseheart Red Ramblers suffered an emotionally deflating loss, a diminutive running back named Gabe Kendor was careening through the defense of Rockford Christian High School.
With 145 pounds of sinewy muscle packed on a 5-foot-6 frame, Kendor, 17, was a bruiser in miniature, capable of smashing through defenders as adeptly as he could dart around them. Sometimes all that stopped him were the awful leg cramps that struck without warning.
But at a trainer’s advice, the junior had taken to drinking a cup of pickle brine before games to stave off the spasms, and on this mid-September night he was feeling fine, spinning around some would-be tacklers, using his speed to blow past others.
Kendor had immense pride, and he hadn’t forgotten that Rockford Christian had humiliated Mooseheart the previous year. He also knew that his team needed the victory to keep pace with its season goal of not only getting to the playoffs, but winning at least one post-season game.
So in the second half, he seized control, juking three defenders off their feet, racing to the end zone and pushing the Red Ramblers to a 14-13 win.
In the exultant locker room, while his teammates danced to the plinks and snaps of Soulja Boy, Kendor said he had something to prove after a poor performance the week before. Plus, two of his siblings had driven in from Iowa to watch him play, a rare treat.
“Gabe ran the ball extremely hard tonight,” said his coach, Gary Urwiler. “He was determined to carry this team.”
Indeed, Kendor played with a hunger few of his teammates could match. But then, few of them knew hunger the way he did.
Fleeing from war
It took years for the boy to realize he was in a war. His parents moved him and his siblings from place to place, trying to stay ahead of the violence engulfing the African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia during the 1990s.
But what Gabe Kendor remembered of his early life was walking to school with his father and little sister, kicking a soccer ball in the warm rain, playing with a gaggle of friends.
“I guess I was happy,” he would say later.
Then, when he was about 6, fighting between government troops and rebel fighters flared into a killing spree in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia. Kendor’s family had to split up. While his parents sought safety in a refugee camp, Kendor and his little sister stayed at an uncle’s apartment.
There was no gunfire there, but the basic foodstuffs of rice, beans and gari, a cassava flour, were still dangerously scarce. Kendor recalled relatives gathering around a 2-year-old cousin who was weak from malnutrition. She closed her eyes, and Kendor knew she was gone.
Soon, he and his sister reunited with their parents in a camp that Kendor’s mother, Jartu, described as little more than a holding pen.
“You had thousands of people sleeping in one place,” she said. “The eating and drinking water was no good. Food was hard to get. Life was no good.”
For Kendor, there was no more soccer, no more friends, no more thoughts of anything but staying alive. He once grew so hungry that he passed out, and only the quick intervention of his mother, who spooned food into his mouth, kept him from fading away for good.
The family received refugee status after two years and a church sponsored their relocation to Cedar Rapids. At first, the frigid Midwestern winters seemed as wretched to Kendor as the steaming misery of the camp. School wasn’t easy, either. His thick accent landed him in English as a second language courses, while his hand-me-down clothes made his classmates giggle.
Nobody laughed during recess, though, when Kendor amazed the children with his quicksilver speed. Though his athleticism didn’t translate easily to American-style football, he still became the toast of the playground.
“It made [living in America] a little better for me,” he recalled. “People would actually talk to me because I was good at a sport.”
After a few years in a rough neighborhood — someone was once shot near the family’s home — Kendor’s parents learned about Mooseheart from another refugee family. It sounded like an ideal escape for their youngest kids.
Children at the campus, spread over 1,000 acres near Aurora, lived in small group homes where they were constantly monitored by adults and drilled in manners and social skills. While some students complained that the academics were too remedial, 4 of 5 graduates went on to higher education, much of it paid for by Mooseheart.
Kendor and his sister Satta arrived during his 6th-grade year, and he immediately longed to be part of the biggest thing on campus. Football was the great unifier, loading the bleachers for Friday night home games and providing grist for endless conversations.
“They bring in all the excitement for the community,” said student leader Sandra Tolson, 17. “Everybody really looks forward to football season. It’s the highlight of the year.”
Playing in pads for the first time, Kendor discovered he was a natural. The suffering of his early life had left him with a high tolerance for pain and an oversized ambition, and when he reached high school he took on the biggest teammates in tackling drills to prove he was ready for varsity ball.
He played sparingly at first, but even as a freshman, his talent was obvious. In a game against the mammoth Knights of Metro-East Lutheran in Edwardsville, Kendor was on the kickoff coverage team when a return man twice his size got stuck in a mass of bodies. Kendor wrestled the ball from him and ran the other way for a touchdown.
His adjustment wasn’t so easy off the field. When he arrived, he joined a newly opened house that was monitored by inexperienced staffers and populated with children who’d been reassigned from their longtime group homes.
Unconstrained by any sense of community, Kendor and the others acted disrespectfully, neglected their chores and gave the house a campuswide reputation as the home of the bad boys.
But veteran leaders soon arrived, along with a group of boys they’d spent years getting to know. The adults, known as family teachers, try to nurture and bond with the children they live among, but they also enforce Mooseheart’s exacting disciplinary code.
With cohesion came relative peace. Kendor became known as a well-mannered kid.
“It’s the best way to go,” he said. “You have to follow the rules or you won’t be able to do anything.”
Not enough points
Mooseheart tracks its residents’ conduct with an elaborate point system. A classroom teacher grants points when a student does well, and subtracts them when he forgets a pencil, neglects his homework or leaves his shirttail untucked. Family teachers use points to encourage good behavior in matters as complex as dating and as prosaic as table etiquette.
At dinner one night, a middle school student was docked 3,000 points for licking a glob of chocolate from his finger. After a brief role-playing exercise in which he mimed using a napkin, 1,500 points were restored.
Family teachers and residents go over the numbers each day, figuring out whether the child has earned enough points for basic privileges like television and phone calls. Those with a surplus can buy extra perks — in one house, for instance, a soda costs 3,000 points, a session with the PlayStation is 5,000 and going out for fast food with a family teacher is 20,000.
It can be an onerous routine — spreadsheets are needed to track kids’ status — and many find it maddening. One Mooseheart player landed in serious trouble during the season for refusing to discuss his point card with his family teacher until after dinner.
“Sometimes it seems crazy to me,” he said. “I deal with it around the clock but sometimes, if I have a bad day at school and I have to come here and deal with those little things — man, whatever.”
The never-ending supervision led to frequent clashes. Players often reported to practice in a foul temper, and as close as they were, one teen’s gloom would inevitably spread.
It had been happening all year. A few days after the Rockford Christian triumph, it happened again.
Chris Morones, Mooseheart’s quarterback, had long been close to his coach, seeking out his advice, sharing occasional lunches and even going for a cruise on Urwiler’s motor boat. On the field, though, their relationship could be tense.
Urwiler, only 5-foot-6, had been an excellent high school quarterback in the 1980s, leading Mooseheart to two undefeated seasons. But his success prompted him to judge Morones’ play with a pitiless eye, and his comments were not always welcome.
During one drill, when Morones lobbed a screen pass to a receiver instead of throwing the ball on a hard, straight line, Urwiler leaped on the mistake.
“Chris, I played the position,” he said. “That’s not how you throw it.”
“Guys are tall now, coach,” Morones replied. “They’re not all 5-5 like they were back in the day.”
His teammates laughed. Urwiler didn’t even smile. Moments later, Morones threw while backpedaling and the coach interjected again.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “Why don’t you plant your feet and throw? What are you so scared of? I’m sorry, but you’re not Brett Favre, son. You can’t throw off your back foot.”
Morones usually took such comments in stride, but on this day he shut down, refusing even to make eye contact with his coach. Other players began watching, waiting for the confrontation that finally came after a few more desultory plays.
“Hey Chris, this team will go as far as you take it,” Urwiler said. “If you act like this, if you practice like this, we might as well cancel the game. You’re uncoachable tonight. You won’t accept criticism, you won’t accept feedback. Do your job and quit jacking around.”
The practice, though, was shot. Urwiler dismissed the players early, but as he watched them go, he confided that he wasn’t really upset with Morones. The quarterback always had been one of his hardest workers, a guy who lifted weights on his own and ran extra laps of the stadium stairs.
But Urwiler needed a vocal leader to take charge during games, and Morones, who had delivered a blistering motivational scolding early in the season, had since shunned that role.
The coach was forced to look for an alternative. He had settled on Gabe Kendor.
“There’s our butt-kicker right there,” he said. “Gabe’s got a wonderful heart. He wants to go somewhere. He loves football. It’s wonderful to see a kid with that character.”
Three days later, the team piled off the bus at Brookfield Academy, a posh Milwaukee-area prep school whose perfectly groomed field was as soft as goose down. The Red Ramblers seemed ready to play, going through warm-ups crisply and shouting their signature cheer at the top of their voices:
BREAKDOWN! HAAH!
BREAKDOWN! HAAH!
BREAKDOWN! HAAH!
It had no real meaning other than to get the team amped. But as the game began under a bruised night sky, the cheer sounded like a prophecy.
Brookfield’s tricky offense bamboozled Mooseheart. The Red Ramblers chased phantom runners while the quarterback darted away with the ball. When they did lock onto the right target, they tackled poorly, letting the Blue Knights tear through their flailing arms for extra yards.
By the end of the first half, Brookfield was up 17-0 and Mooseheart was in shock.
“If we lose to this team, forget about the playoffs!” Kendor shouted to his teammates. “Why is the quarterback running around like that? Shut him down!”
But little changed when play resumed. Mooseheart went down in a 17-8 loss that the running back considered an embarrassment. He picked at his food during the post-game meal, and later vowed that he wouldn’t let his teammates forget.
“We don’t want to have that regret,” he said. “I hate that feeling in my stomach. It was hard that whole weekend, that regret of losing and playing a bad game when we still had a chance.”
A bad game, though, would soon become the least of his regrets.
Benched
Kendor was lining up for a drill in practice a few days later when Mooseheart’s chief disciplinarian arrived. Joined by two security guards, he spoke quietly to the player for a few minutes before sending him to the locker room.
The teen changed out of his gear and trudged home. Urwiler didn’t even watch him go. He didn’t want his team dwelling on setbacks, and it had just been handed a huge one.
The weekend after the Brookfield game, Kendor had been hanging out with his girlfriend when they got into an argument. She started hitting him, he said, and he grabbed her wrists to restrain her. When she finally walked away he tossed a football at her in what he thought was a playful gesture.
A security guard who saw it didn’t share that interpretation. He confronted Kendor and questioned him sharply about whether he was trying to hurt the girl. Growing annoyed, Kendor finally called the guard a “rent-a-cop.”
The insult was out of character, but insubordination is a serious offense at Mooseheart. On a list of 182 social skills residents are taught, accepting criticism, disagreeing appropriately and showing respect are in the top 10.
Kendor was suspended from extracurricular activities for one week. He would not be permitted to play in the next game, against Wisconsin’s tough Maranatha Baptist Academy. He wouldn’t even be allowed to watch.
The Red Ramblers rallied behind their absent teammate, inking the No. 5 from his jersey onto their wrist tape, but they started the game in disarray. They surrendered 10 quick points to Maranatha, a team with its own elusive quarterback.
Toward the end of the first half, though, the Red Ramblers started feeding the ball to Donald Niersbach. The last of three brothers to attend Mooseheart, he was a slender, lean-jawed senior whose gaze went hard during close games. One of Urwiler’s quietest players, he was also one of the most determined.
Niersbach bashed through the line repeatedly, chopping his legs so hard that grass sprayed into the air. With one final collision and spin, he was in the end zone.
The second half saw the teams trading punches like teetering heavyweights, neither capable of a knockout.
“I hope it’s our night,” Urwiler muttered with just over two minutes left. “Dear Lord, I hope it’s our night.”
But then Maranatha’s quarterback slipped through the Mooseheart defense and led his team to a touchdown, sealing what would end as a 22-13 Maranatha victory.
Urwiler seethed with a cold anger as he led his team into the locker room. It was the second ugly loss in a week, filled with penalties and blown assignments. Kendor’s speed and tenacity had been badly missed.
Worst of all, some little-used players seemed to be treating the game as a joke, laughing as the final horn sounded. Urwiler called them out, saying their “disease” of indifference had infected the entire team.
Then Niersbach stood up. He had never been much of a speechmaker, but the season had reached a crisis. In a voice that grew steadily more intense, he laid the brutal truth before his teammates.
The Red Ramblers were 3-3 with three games left. Another loss and they would be out of playoff contention. Maybe the younger guys didn’t understand how badly that would hurt, Niersbach said, but they would when their own high school careers were about to end.
Some players started crying. A few underclassmen said they wouldn’t let the seniors lose again. It was nice to hear, but Niersbach didn’t really believe it.
Later, as Kendor sat in his group home’s living room, trying to earn points by listening to a CD about treating women respectfully, a family teacher told him what had happened. Kendor was crushed: His teammates had needed him, and he had let them down.
Never had defeat tasted so bitter.
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Next: Season in jeopardy, the team finds its pride
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How we reported this story
To research the story, Tribune reporter John Keilman attended most practices and every game of the Mooseheart Red Ramblers’ 2007 season over 2 1/2 months starting in August. With rare exceptions, he was granted full access to the players’ group homes, classrooms and team meetings.
Unless otherwise noted, passages describing scenes on the field, in the locker room or on campus were witnessed by the reporter. Thoughts or emotions ascribed to a person were taken from multiple interviews and later confirmed by the subject. All quotes were heard by the reporter.
Passages describing Gabe Kendor’s childhood in Africa and life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and at Mooseheart were taken from interviews with Kendor, his mother, Jartu Kendor, and family teachers Jack Dixon and Lou Peryea.
The account of the incident that caused Kendor’s suspension was provided by the player and by campus officials. The description of Mooseheart’s disciplinary system was taken from interviews with campus officials and students.
The account of the conversations after the Maranatha Baptist game was provided by Coach Gary Urwiler, Donald Niersbach and other players. The reporter, for the only time in the season, was not permitted to enter the locker room.
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IN THE WEB EDITION
*Find more photos of the Red Ramblers.
*Watch video of quarterback Chris Morones talking about life on the Mooseheart campus.
*Read Part 1 of the series. chicagotribune.com/mooseheart
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jkeilman@tribune.com
