Tall, lanky Cory Gathing was 17 when he found out his high school girlfriend was pregnant.

A doctor had lectured Cory and his younger brother about condoms. Unfortunately, Cory explained to his mother in the spring of 1997, one night the condoms ran out.

Fatherhood was an early dividing line among the teenagers who'd played football together as boys on the 1992 south Sacramento Raiders Junior Midgets. While some immersed themselves in classes, team sports and after-school activities, others had children to support.

Growing up mostly in rough, lower-income neighborhoods, sports had offered the players a bright spot amid some sobering probabilities. African American boys in those communities face particularly high arrest and incarceration rates and low graduation rates. Becoming a teenage parent didn't help those odds.

Clifford McDowell -- the fast, skinny running back who had driven himself to practice at age 12, was among the first to father a child. Tequila McDowell was born when Clifford was barely 16, months before a bullet took out his lung. Clifford IV followed the next year, then Cliffon, then Marques, then Santa, then Yelce, then Cliffonte.

By the time he turned 24, Clifford would have seven children with five girlfriends. He tattooed the name of each child on his forearms.

On and off during those years, Clifford dated his longtime girlfriend, Yaxchi Bell, the mother of his third and seventh children. Though Clifford's betrayals stung, Yaxchi made it a point to welcome his other children into her life. She was determined to be their connection to their father.

Wyatt Johnson, the Raiders' stocky running back, was 17 when his cousin, LaMarr Alexander, asked him to come along as a buffer while he told his mother about the birth of her first grandson. It was not a total shock to her. For months, she had noticed LaMarr marking his calendar "one month," "two months," "three months."

That same spring, by the time Cory learned Zakiyyah Hill was pregnant, the couple were no longer together. Still, months before baby Alayzia was born, the teenagers sat down with their parents in the Gathings' living room.

"You've made us a family," Cory's father remembers saying. "We're going to be a family for Alayzia."

Before dawn on Oct. 12, 1997, Cory got the phone call. He and his mother rushed to the hospital. There, the 17-year-old held his tiny daughter in his arms for the first time.

Cory and his family cared for Alayzia two weekends a month. The little girl was his everything. Cory, the former elementary school honor roll student, dropped out of high school and started working at a Toys "R" Us to help pay for Alayzia's diapers and formula. Whenever he could, he outfitted her in brand new Nike Jordans.

Alayzia was not yet 2 in February 1999, when Cory started dating his old friend Roslyn. Though she knew some people considered Cory a bully, Roslyn saw something different.

She loved watching him play with Alayzia and with her own small daughter, Adrianna. Cory was the only father Adrianna knew. He chased the girls around the park and played ball with them. In those tender moments, Roslyn felt, Cory found peace.

Once the couple began living together, Roslyn tried to ignore what Cory did when he wasn't home. She knew he'd been arrested on suspicion of selling rock cocaine and hoped he'd stop.

"I didn't want details," she says.

At times Cory had so much money coming in that, rather than bother with the laundry, he'd take Roslyn and the girls shopping for new clothes.

She tried to tell him: You have more than enough money. You have nice cars and clothing. You can stop now.

Sometimes, for a while, he would.

Cory's close friend, Wyatt Johnson, had returned to Sacramento around 1998, after more than four years at a school for troubled youth in the Nevada desert.

He'd hated the reform school at first. The huts they slept in crawled with spiders. But Wyatt, a star football and baseball player long burdened with self-doubt, eventually learned to rock climb and cross-country ski.

One of the school's assistant football coaches, seeing something special in Wyatt, volunteered to mentor him. For the first time he could remember, Wyatt felt good about himself.

By graduation, two colleges had offered him athletic scholarships. But Wyatt missed Sacramento too much. He came home and started playing semipro football.

With the same friends, no job prospects and no structure, he soon returned to the streets full force. Around Dec. 31, 1999, Wyatt was arrested on suspicion of possessing rock cocaine for sale.

The following October, Placer County sheriff's deputies took Wyatt and Cory into custody and booked them on charges of stealing a 1995 Mazda LX. To this day, Wyatt insists their accuser loaned it to them. Regardless, serving 84 days with his friend in the Placer County jail, Wyatt remembers, "felt horrible."

In November, Cory sent his younger brother, Jason, a three-page letter from jail, his print neat and sloping:

Jay, I've come close with death several times trying to live in this gangsta life. And every time the Lord was there to (bail) me out even though I wasn't doing right and now it's time I started listening, giving back and doing the right thing for a better life. ... But now Jason you don't even feel me how I look up to you and Dad. Right now both of you are my major roll models in life right next (to) Jesus, because he's perfect.

He signed off:

Love you with all my heart Your Big Bro, CORY G

After Cory got out of jail, he and Jason played football together for a season at American River College. Jason was a star; Cory the team's most spirited booster. Sometimes, to his fiancée Roslyn's amusement, Cory watched childhood Raiders videos to get himself pumped up.

On Aug. 26, 2002, Cory and Wyatt were supposed to take their girlfriends to the movies. At the last minute, Cory didn't want to go; he wouldn't say why. Roslyn knew he'd been trying to get together some money to give to Jason, who was heading off to the University of Montana to play football.

That evening, the couple picked up some food from Taco Bell. They parked in front of Wyatt's aunt's home, on the edge of Oak Park, and started eating.

Around 11 p.m. a silver car pulled up.

Roslyn saw Cory get out of the car and shake hands with a young man. Unconcerned, she turned up the music. A moment later, she heard Cory's footsteps, walking quickly.

Then shots.

Roslyn froze, then threw herself to the car floor. A bullet grazed her hip. After what seemed like forever, she heard a door slam and a car drive away. For a moment, Cory continued to stand. Then he collapsed.

Officers arrived to find what they described as a large "uncooperative" crowd gathered around Cory's body. Detectives recovered a gun and rock cocaine nearby, but no arrests ever were made.

The next day, Jason held Alayzia, 4, and Adrianna, Roslyn's 5-year-old, in his lap while his mother told the girls their Daddy was in heaven.

After Cory died, Wyatt was furious. In part, he blamed himself for not being there. Wyatt's mother, Lorraine, worried that Cory's killers might come looking for her son. "I was scared for him," she says.

The month after the shooting, she sent Wyatt to stay with relatives in Los Angeles.

Years earlier, Wyatt had flown to Southern California for a weeklong visit with his former neighbor and teammate, Mike Adelekan. Mike's mother had sent him away from south Sacramento to live with his father, a Nigerian-born doctor, in affluent Palos Verdes.

On that visit, Wyatt and Mike's south Sacramento ties remained strong. The two had played video games and ogled the houses in Mike's fancy new neighborhood, some with guesthouses larger than their friends' homes back in Sacramento.

But by the fall of 2002, their worlds had moved far apart.

While Wyatt grieved in one part of Los Angeles, Mike lived in another part of the city, unaware of the tragedy that had hit his teammates. Just weeks before Wyatt arrived, Mike had started law school.

Mike had long recognized the contrasts between his old life and his new one. As a 13-year-old, he had been awed by perfectly manicured Palos Verdes, where people owned horses and drove Mercedes-Benzes. His new classmates had indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Being surrounded by so much wealth began to focus Mike on a goal: He wanted that sort of luxury for himself.

Growing up in Meadowview, down the street from Wyatt, Mike had assumed he would join a gang, the question was only: Which one? In the halls of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, the same kind of assumptions existed about college. The question was not whether he would go, but to which one?

Mike had always been a disciplined student and athlete. At Peninsula, he played four years of football and ran three years of track. He took honors classes. His grade-point average hovered around 3.5.

In his senior year, Mike was accepted at the University of Southern California. Mike was well-liked on the college campus. But sometimes classmates would assume he was an athlete -- how else could a well-built black man have gotten into an elite private school? Such assumptions sometimes got to him.

"Sometimes, when it feels like they're saying, 'You know, the reason why you're here is because you play sports.' When it feels like that, then yeah, it bothers me," he recalls. "But, you know, you tend to brush that off."

As a boy, Mike had always been first and foremost an entrepreneur, charging classmates and teammates a quarter for sour gumballs that cost him a nickel.

In 2001, he graduated from USC with a degree in business. He'd made the dean's list four times.

A few months later, on a whim, he took the LSAT and applied at the last minute to Southwestern University. Halfway through his first year there, Mike remembers the dean calling him into his office and telling him his grades were outstanding. Top students often transferred to higher-ranked schools. He asked Mike not to do so.

Mike hadn't been considering a transfer, but the dean's plea planted a seed. The following year, he enrolled at UCLA -- one of the top 15 law schools in the country.

Other Raiders teammates, whether because of parental pressure or their own initiative, also were thriving in school.

At least seven of Mike's teammates eventually headed to four-year universities. Fourteen, including Cory Gathing, enrolled in community colleges. At least four joined the military. One, Levi Terrill, No. 64, enrolled in the police academy. Another, Noah Hayes, No. 40, already was making a career in entertainment, acting and singing.

Even Lawrence McAlister, No. 34, whose little sister had been raped and killed by their stepfather just months before his high school graduation, had gone to college at University of Nevada, Reno, on a football scholarship.

At the same time, at least 10 of the players did not remain in traditional high schools; some, such as Wyatt, graduated in alternative settings; others left school completely.

For some members of the Raiders, the prospect of playing college and even professional football had been a single thread pulling them through the rocky teenage years. When the dream died, the thread broke. Boys like Clifford McDowell, whose football career ended the night he lost his lung, dropped out.

"When I first found out I couldn't play," he remembers, "I threw all of my trophies away."

At 16, Clifford rode a Greyhound bus to St. Louis, having heard that drugs bought cheaply in California fetched a high price there. Clifford was arrested on suspicion of transporting illegal drugs across state lines, a federal crime. He says now that he was set up by an older relative. He served a week or two in jail before the judge granted him a break. It would be one of numerous stints behind bars.

Clifford's greatest heartache came from dwelling on what might have been -- the speed that could have taken him places if the rest of his life wasn't moving so fast. He would sit in high school stadiums, watching his former teammates play for teams he'd never have the chance to join.

Years would pass before sports would again help transform his life.

Tyrone Rhinehart's redemption came sooner.

The budding rap artist had been among the first of the Raiders to carry a gun, pull a trigger and go to juvenile hall. He was the player other teammates feared most.

And he landed behind bars again and again. In late 2001, at age 22, he was sent to jail for possessing a sock full of rock cocaine for sale.

On Aug. 13, 2002, a few weeks before Cory Gathing was killed, Tyrone emerged from the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center determined that it would be his last time in jail.

During the nine months he'd served, several factors helped him reach that new resolve. He was placed in a wing with older men, who counseled him to change. They read the Bible with him; he started paying attention.

For years, every time Tyrone had been sentenced to juvenile hall, his aunt Brenda asked him: "Are you tired yet?" He'd acknowledge that he was, then return to his old life.

This time, when aunt Brenda asked, she thought Tyrone sounded different. Serious. Yes, he told her, I'm tired.

Six weeks out of jail -- and a decade after he'd lined up for the Raiders Junior Midgets' team picture -- Tyrone married Donnisha, who'd had a crush on him since she was 9 and had a son by him. For the wedding at Chapel of the Bells in Reno, Tyrone's aunts bought Donnisha a long, white dress at J.C. Penney. They bought Tyrone a new suit.

"I told him he had to make an example," his aunt Barbara remembers.

The following month, one of Tyrone's former mentors from the streets invited him to a tent revival in a church parking lot on 47th Street. The church -- This Is Pentecost Ministries -- tailors its outreach to troubled souls, including gang bangers, prostitutes and drug users.

That night, a prostitute-turned-pastor was telling the story of her transformation. The woman reminded Tyrone of his mother, who had worked the streets during his adolescence.

"That's when my heart got converted," he says.

That summer, in July 2003, another of Tyrone's close friends, Damon Perkins, was killed.

Those who gathered at Damon's mother's duplex kept an eye on Tyrone. He walked in circles, punching things and crying. He appeared to be fighting with himself.

For years, Tyrone had been surrounded by death. As a teenager, he visited the Sacramento Memorial Lawn cemetery every morning, smoking pot at a friend's grave. Then, in 1999, Tyrone's cousin -- aunt Barbara's son, Tiger -- was shot to death. Tyrone and a friend hunted down a witness, forced him into the trunk of a car and pressed him to talk to police.

The week Damon died, Tyrone's aunts worried that their newly reformed nephew would head out to exact revenge.

Instead, Tyrone went to church.

Nearly two years later, Damon's younger brother, David, was killed. After David's funeral, Tyrone decided to avoid cemeteries altogether; staring at headstones had become too painful.

That decision kept him away from the burial of one of his old Raiders teammates in April 2006, held at the cemetery he'd frequented as a kid.

As Wyatt Johnson clocked out of his state janitorial job around 1 a.m. on April 11, 2006, he talked on the phone with his second cousin, LaMarr Alexander. The two spoke every day. They'd been inseparable since childhood.

"If LaMarr was around," remembers his cousin, Darrell Harden, "Wyatt was five minutes away."

Wyatt had been there as the buffer when LaMarr told his mother about the birth of his first son. When Wyatt later fathered his own children, LaMarr counseled his cousin to leave the gangster life behind. Stay home with your kids, he'd urge.

Elk Grove Police Officer Jason Kearsing would later say he tried to pull over the 1993 Oldsmobile that LaMarr was driving after he discovered the registered owner, a friend of LaMarr's, had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. He would say he chased LaMarr into Wyatt's mother's neighborhood after LaMarr refused to stop. He would say LaMarr threw a flowerpot and garden tools and seemed to reach for a gun. He would say he felt threatened and so he shot to kill. The coroner's report would note that LaMarr had cocaine and Ecstasy in his system.

LaMarr's family and friends didn't believe it. The LaMarr they knew wasn't a fighter; he was a short, fun-loving prankster who ran from trouble. Like many young African American men, his mother said, LaMarr had always been particularly afraid of the police.

Wyatt's mother, Lorraine, had fallen asleep on the couch that night. She remembers waking up around 4 a.m. to sirens. And then, through an open window, hearing LaMarr crying out. "Help me! Help me! I'm right here."

Official reports of what happened that night continue to be disputed by LaMarr's family and friends. Last February, the District Attorney's Office cleared Officer Kearsing of wrongdoing. The Sacramento chapter of the NAACP responded with a call for a grand jury investigation. LaMarr's family is suing.

But the outcome is the same. Cause of death: gunshot wound to the back.

The day LaMarr died, Wyatt embraced the cousins' close friend, Jazmine Dennis.

"What," she remembers Wyatt asking, "am I going to do now?"

In addition to Tyrone, other members of the old Raiders team were notably absent from LaMarr's funeral. Mike Adelekan, working at his law firm in Los Angeles, didn't even realize his old friend was gone.

Other Raiders traveled hundreds of miles to attend. Clifford was there, as was J.R., Tyrone's cousin. Gary Lewis took the day off work, Lawrence McAlister drove up from Fresno. One teammate, Yusseff Robinson, No. 24, was a pallbearer.

LaMarr's mother gave Wyatt the honorary title of armor bearer -- he was so emotional, she didn't think he could help carry his cousin's casket. But in death, as in life, he was to be LaMarr's protector.

The day of the funeral, the teammates remembered their old friend as a diminutive prankster who was also a sturdy quarterback, a well-dressed ladies' man who'd become a loving father of five.

Some found themselves wondering about their own futures, and about those of their sons, as well.

Could they beat the odds? Some would seek to answer that question in church pews, others behind prison walls. In a handful of cases, the search would take them back to the one place they felt most at home: the football field.

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The Bee's Jocelyn Wiener can be reached at (916) 321-1967 or jwiener@sacbee.com.

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