Last November, over Thanksgiving weekend, a group of south Sacramento Raiders coaches and parents drove 28 squirmy 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds to Las Vegas for a national football tournament.

Some 17 years earlier - before he used money from drug sales to buy a car as a 12-year-old, before a bullet took out his lung at 16 - Clifford McDowell had scored five touchdowns at this same Vegas tournament.

Now he was back as an assistant coach.

These days, the once-skinny running back boasts a little plumpness around his middle. His arms are tattooed with gang mottos and the names of his seven children; his chest bears the round scars of bullet wounds. Though Clifford is reserved, his smile, when it comes, is open and generous. His passion for football has never faded.

Their first night in a Vegas rental house, Clifford gathered the Junior PeeWee players together in their cartoon pajamas and T-shirts to tell them the story of his life.

I've been shot five times, he told them in his low, raspy voice. I've been to the penitentiary. I blew my chance at football.

"I messed up," he said. "Please don't be like me."

Fifteen years have passed since Clifford and his teammates posed for their team photo. In the fall of 1992, they were 12 and 13 years old, their faces filled with possibility.

Because most of them were African American boys growing up in rough neighborhoods, they faced poor odds of graduating from high school and high odds of going to jail. The specter of premature death hung over them.

Now, those who survived are in their late 20s, largely past the dangerous years. According to a landmark 2001 surgeon general's report, young men's participation in violence peaks during late adolescence.

Many players on the 1992 team managed to dodge serious trouble. Even those, like Clifford, who got swallowed by the streets - and saw bullets and prison eclipse friends' lives - are settling down. They have families and jobs and, in a few cases, mortgages. After so much despair, many have reached a new point of hope.

In one form or another, however, tragedy touched the lives of the 35 boys on the 1992 south Sacramento Raiders Junior Midgets team: At least three are dead. At least 17 have been incarcerated. One, David Towner Jr. - No. 30 - was sentenced in June to 16 years in prison for killing his girlfriend.

At least five dropped out of high school completely. Yet, educationally, the team ultimately beat the national odds. Twenty-one of the 26 players who shared their stories with The Bee - or whose families spoke on their behalf - eventually earned high school diplomas, another three GEDs. Eleven graduated or are on track to graduate from four-year colleges, community colleges or trade schools.

None made it to the NFL, although the younger brother of one, Keith Lewis, does play safety for the 49ers. But five of the players contacted by The Bee played college football. Three more played semipro.

Four have served in the military. Two are teaching in the public schools they attended as kids. One is a youth correctional counselor. One is a sheriff's deputy. One sells cellular phones.

Some survived by leaving their old neighborhoods. Others now prosper in the communities where they grew up.

Of the five teammates whose lives were examined most closely by The Bee, one is dead, one is an attorney and three have worked, in recent years, to turn their lives around. Clifford McDowell, now 28, is among those three.

After spending his teen years in and out of juvenile hall and jail, Clifford tired of selling rock cocaine and watching acquaintances gun each other down. As a father to seven - or, as he says, "hella kids" - he had a reason to stick around.

Someone, after all, needed to teach them to play football.

One Saturday last October, Clifford and his fellow coaches herded their players - including Clifford's son and nephew - into a wide, grassy swath of Nicholas Park, just off 47th Avenue.

That morning, the coaches were revved up: the most important game of the regular season was scheduled for the following day. The Berkeley Cougars were good, and the Raiders faced a real prospect of losing.

Coach Clifford was adamant that that couldn't happen. So were the other coaches. To lose would be insult enough - but the game also happened to be the Raiders homecoming. Homecomings are designed for celebration.

Clifford handed out new T-shirts and hats to the boys, admonishing them to arrive at the Cosumnes River College stadium by 8 a.m. "or you're not playing." His best friend and fellow assistant coach, Curtie Clark - son of the head coach, Curtis Sr. - gave an enthusiastic pep talk.

"I think we're more excited than the kids," said another coach.

Clifford's transformation from teenage menace to adult role model is a work in progress. It picked up speed in 2005, when Yaxchi, his longtime girlfriend and mother of two of his children, married him in an impromptu Reno wedding. Then Curtie - who for years ran with Clifford on the streets - found religion.

Encouraged by Curtie's metamorphosis, last summer Clifford asked his cousin, Dimitrios Champlaie, for a loan. He was ready, at 27, for a real job. His criminal career, he said, was "a wrap."

Dimitrios set Clifford up as a gardener, spending more than $3,000 on lawn mowers, weed whackers, car magnets and fliers advertising mowing and pruning. As business grew, Dimitrios bought his cousin an old pickup truck.

"What I seen in his eyes," Dimitrios said, "he was making a turning point."

Living up to his own new standards is not always easy, however. Earlier this year, Clifford got into a fistfight at a nightclub backing up a buddy. When he and some friends were injured in a car crash last fall, he said, they bolted from the scene on reflex.

After his pickup broke down, Clifford put his lawn service on hold. Earlier this year, he started earning hourly wages for the first time in his life, loading boxes at a Goodwill warehouse.

Still, most everyone agrees that Clifford's true calling is coaching: He's led his children's basketball and baseball teams to championships. And starting each summer, he becomes a Raider again.

Coach Clifford never skips a practice. He never misses a game.

Early on the morning of their homecoming game against the Berkeley Cougars, the Junior PeeWees gathered in a corner of the bleachers, the October sun already blazing overhead.

The players did their best to sit still for their coaches, but it was hard. One boy accused the opposing team of talking "so much trash on the Internet," unleashing boyish bravado.

"They didn't lose in their homecoming, so we ain't losing in our homecoming," announced one boy.

"If we lose, I'm quitting," declared another.

Coach Curtie walked around giving high fives. The night before he'd been too excited to sleep. As the boys marched to the locker room to weigh in and change into pads and cleats, they chanted, "Whose house is this? Our house, you know!"

On the sidelines that morning, Wyatt Johnson tossed a football back and forth with his 2-year-old son, Wyatt III.

Wyatt, the young running back so athletically gifted his teammates expected him to be the next Bo Jackson, still has an athlete's build, stocky and strong. But he seems to have lost some of his fighting spirit.

When Wyatt talks about the past, he sometimes chokes on tears. After his close friend, Cory Gathing, was shot to death at age 22, Wyatt's heart filled with rage. After his cousin, LaMarr Alexander, was shot by police last year, it broke.

Two of Wyatt's children, Cory, 2, and I'Nieca Corrina, 4, are named for his old friend. Along with Wyatt III and a stepdaughter, they are his main source of joy. But last fall, Cory and Corrina's mother brought a restraining order against Wyatt, accusing him of ramming his car into hers while she and the children were inside. As a result, he didn't see them for months.

While serving two months in jail for assault with a deadly weapon for the car-ramming incident, Wyatt married little Wyatt's mother in a quick courthouse ceremony.

After his release from jail in April, Wyatt enrolled in a required anger management course and started looking for a job. Once employers see a felony on his record, he says, they usually turn him down.

"It's real hard to be optimistic," he said.

For now, Wyatt fills his days looking for work, shuttling his son and stepdaughter around and coaching his stepdaughter's softball and soccer teams. He wants to give his players the message he craved so intensely as a kid: "Believe in yourself."

He and his new wife are trying to build a future together, complete with plans for a proper wedding reception.

Sometimes, he says, he's tempted to give up and return to hustling for quick, easy money. When he feels that urge, he talks with Clifford's friend, Curtie, who gives him pep talks and encourages him not to backslide.

On the morning of last year's homecoming game, however, Curtie and Clifford and their fellow coaches were the ones who needed encouragement. The Junior PeeWees were quickly coming undone.

Perhaps it was the pressure, perhaps a little too much confidence early on. Perhaps the coaches were getting too upset on the sidelines. Perhaps, as some suggested, the referees were making bad calls.

Whatever it was, after the Raiders gained a few yards on the initial play, the ball kept heading the wrong way down the field. After the first half, no one had scored. Despite their coaches' entreaties to "keep your head up," the boys' shoulders were starting to slump.

As hip-hop pounded over the loudspeaker, the Raiders spent halftime sitting under a tree at one end of the field, forlornly picking at weeds while their coaches tried to pump them up.

"Come on, you all, we've got to snap out of it right now," Clifford said.

The game remained scoreless until the fourth quarter. Then, with seven minutes left on the clock, a Cougars touchdown confirmed what the Raiders had already sensed. A few minutes later, the Cougars scored again.

With less than a minute left, the Raiders finally got a touchdown. But it was too late. The boys trudged off the field in tears.

"We're going to see them again," Coach Clifford said, fixing his sights on rebounding in the championship game.

A week before the Raiders homecoming defeat, Cory Gathing's family had commemorated a much deeper loss.

Every October since Cory's death, the family has gathered to celebrate his birthday. Sometimes they have cake. They pen notes to Cory on helium-filled balloons. We love you, they write. We miss you. We know you are watching over us.

This year, as always, Cory's daughter, 9-year-old Alayzia, released the first balloon. Cory's mother watched until the balloon disappeared, then told her granddaughter: "Daddy's got it."

It's been years since Cornell and Regina Gathing had a son on the Raiders, years since they brought bags of sandwiches and spent entire Saturdays on the sidelines, volunteering.

Cornell, known to the Raiders as Coach C, now referees high school basketball games and works as dean of students at PS7 Elementary, a public charter school in Oak Park. On weekday afternoons, he practices batting with Alayzia. The bright, animated little girl reminds him of her father as a boy.

Alayzia still has the Tickle Me Elmo doll her father gave her before he died. She sleeps in his Valley High School football jersey. On a shelf in his living room, Coach C keeps his son's first home run ball - the one Cory clutched as he rushed onto a basketball court where his father was refereeing 15 years ago.

Cory's brother, Jason, is taking graduate classes, planning to be a college dean. He spends his free time working with troubled youth, hoping to help other families avoid the pain he knows so intimately.

"I had a wall," Jason says. "And, once my brother died, that wall just collapsed."

Jason and his parents plan to create the Cory Gathing Foundation For At-Risk Youth, partly to provide youth football scholarships.

Coach Clifford doesn't want any of the 2006 Raiders' families to go through the agony of losing a son. If it were up to him, he'd improve their odds of success by requiring good grades and behavior to play on his team.

In the final weeks of the 2006 season, as his Raiders handily won two rounds of playoffs and headed toward a championship game against the Berkeley Cougars, Clifford remained concerned about what was happening off the field. By the time he sat down in Las Vegas to share his life story with his team, he knew several boys were being lured toward the streets. And he knew where that would lead them.

After a few tumblers of Hennessy cognac one evening, Clifford spilled his dark thoughts to other parents. Among his worries, he said, was his own 10-year-old son.

"He reminds me too much of myself," he said.

For many of Clifford's former teammates, memories of the south Sacramento Raiders have faded. Bemused smiles spread across their faces as they study their old team photo.

No. 34, Lawrence McAlister, is now the father of triplets. No. 64, Levi Terrill, works as a sheriff's deputy in the Bay Area. No. 55, Chuck Thorntona, is a counselor with the state Division of Juvenile Justice. No. 40, Noah Hayes, has performed with the Sacramento Music Circus and teaches hip-hop dance and theater at Sacramento High School.

One of the team's biggest success stories is Mike Adelekan, who now goes by Boyega, a shortened version of his Nigerian given name Adegboyega. He graduated from UCLA law school two years ago.

Most mornings, Mike buttons on a designer shirt, fastens his cuff links and walks out of his Hollywood apartment, which is sparsely furnished but for the two gigantic televisions and the snowboard leaning against one wall.

Mike's office is on the 43rd floor of the Gas Company Tower building downtown. From his window, he can see to Palos Verdes, the affluent community where his mother sent him to spend his teenage years with his father.

Mike often works late preparing legal documents for clients of Sidley Austin, the high-profile law firm where Illinois senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama got his start as a summer intern. Someday he hopes to go into business for himself. Ever since he sold candy to his Raiders teammates and middle school classmates at a profit, he's been an entrepreneur at heart.

Sometimes Mike thinks about how his life might have turned out if he hadn't left Sacramento at 13. He's certain he would have joined a gang - beyond that, he can only speculate.

"I'd probably be dead or in jail," he said, sitting in his apartment one Saturday last spring. "I definitely wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now."

In one corner of Mike's sparsely decorated office stands an award he received in February 2006 from Sacramento's black newspaper. The Sacramento Observer selected him as one of 30 local African Americans under age 30 making remarkable contributions to society.

The previous year, that honor had gone to one of his Raiders teammates: Tyrone Rhinehart.

As a child, Tyrone never cared much for football. He'd expected to be dead by 18. But at 25 he was recognized by the Observer for his work reaching out to young people through Meadowview Community Solutions, a small nonprofit he and his wife founded to provide mentoring and parenting classes to south Sacramento families.

Tyrone is slender, with long-lashed brown eyes that exude a quiet intensity. His goal in life, he says, is to help boys avoid the horrors he experienced as a child - seeing his mother become a prostitute, losing friend after friend to bullets - and to help them make better choices.

Tyrone typically spends his days watching his three young sons and his stepson while his wife works. At night, she watches them, while he works as a janitorial supervisor at the state Department of General Services. In July their fifth and six children were born, twins.

For extra income, Tyrone recently opened a Java City coffee stand. One morning, he showed his sons the sign advertising his coffee cart. He pointed to the words "Café Noir." Since the boys do not yet read, he offered them his own interpretation: "Right here," he said, "it says, 'College tuition for Rhinehart kids.'"

The family worships together Sundays at This Is Pentecost Ministries, across the street from the park where the Raiders now practice. Tyrone arrives early to drive the church van to pick up those who need a ride. He shares his story with parishioners who have hit bottom. If he could pull his life together, he tells them, so can they.

Before hundreds of worshippers at a tent revival last Easter, the pastor called Tyrone forward to give his testimony for the very first time. He took a deep breath.

"There's so much that's happened in my life," he said, "I don't know where to start."

Tyrone is trying to get his mother to share her testimony as well. She left prostitution years ago, returned to nursing and is now helping care for his children.

Every fall, Tyrone's stepson begs his father to let him play football. Until this season, Tyrone had resisted, knowing how cruel the outside world can be, how hard it can be to lose close friends.

In the old Raiders team photo, he finds plenty of reasons to shelter his boys as long as he can: Cory Gathing. LaMarr Alexander. Dejay Lott, whose shooting death at 21 was reported in Colorado newspapers in 1999. To that list of casualties he adds the names of several others - a cousin, close friends, his former mentors from the streets.

This summer, Tyrone relented, allowing his two oldest sons to start football. But he also plans to link up his small nonprofit with the Raiders to mentor the players once the season ends.

If something drastic isn't done to improve the lot of children in his community, Tyrone believes, today's Raiders are going to experience the same tragedies their fathers did. Football helps, he says, but his own experience tells him it isn't enough.

"It just goes in cycles," he said. "This (generation) is just going to be a repeat ... and it's going to be worse."

Others among the 1992 Raiders still believe in the transformative power of football. The structure and discipline offered by coaches, the brotherhood among players, the electric thrill of a completed pass - all those ingredients help turn a boy into a man.

Three former teammates are now coaches for youth football organizations. As these newly minted coaches search the familiar eyes of the 29 boys who showed up for the team photo, they see plenty of potential. Some has been realized. Some has been wasted. But, on that autumn morning nearly 15 years ago, they know for certain it existed.

And as those same coaches watch the next generation take the field, they feel fresh determination: These boys can go so far.

"I didn't make it," Clifford says. "So I'm going to push them hard."

One brisk morning last December, Clifford's Raiders Junior PeeWees stood in a circle outside the Highlands High School stadium. They had prepared for months for this rematch: the championship against the Berkeley Cougars.

Each player took his turn in the middle, vowing to do his best. When it was Clifford's son's turn, he spoke as forcefully as he could: "I'm gonna give 100 percent to everything I do," he said.

Minutes before the kickoff, Clifford's players closed their eyes and listened as Coach Curtie led them in a prayer. With heads held high, they marched into the stadium.

Then: the crack of helmets making contact, the thud of well-executed tackles, the hurried steps of a small boy sprinting toward the end zone.

With each touchdown, the coaches and players leaped higher. They pumped their fists harder.

"We still climbing," one coach called out. "We're about to get to the top of that hill."

As the final seconds slipped off the clock, the winning team began to cheer: "Who we?" "Raiders!" "Who we?" "Raiders!"

They had done it: 19-6. A few short speeches were made. The requisite hands were slapped.

Finally, the boys gathered around the tallest trophy on the field for an impromptu group photograph. Coach Clifford stood in the back, beaming.

His young team's future lay just ahead.

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

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