LAFAYETTE — On a recent weekday afternoon, the Justice High School eight-man football team walked across South Boulder Road to LaMont Does Park to practice. There, the Phoenix ran through drills on a small, sprinkler hole-laden patch of grass. There are no white lines marking yardage.
Justice has three blocking pads and eight balls. And one barbell, which rests in its “weight room,” with a few plates and one bench.
What may seem like adverse conditions for a typical varsity football team is the norm at Justice, a year-round college prep high school geared toward at-risk students who have been rejected by the traditional school system.
The 14-year-old school is in an unassuming residential neighborhood in Lafayette, where Justice’s 84 students — who come from throughout the area — swarm the narrow hallways of the tiny building between classes. The school’s cafeteria is a kitchenette with a small table. A small utility shed houses all of the football equipment.
Amid this gritty chaos stepped Nels Thoreson, a former college quarterback at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, to coach and mentor a group of kids nobody else wanted and many of whom had never played football.
“For many of our players, this is the first time in their life that they’re held accountable for anything at all, and that’s hard when you’re a 17-year-old and you’ve never had to answer to anybody,” Thoreson said. “And now, you’re getting talked to by 33-year-old Caucasian dude from northern Wisconsin who’s telling you how it is, and you might not like what I’m saying, but at the end of the day, these kids know that I’m always in their corner no matter what.”
Senior wide receiver and cornerback Jerald Romero typifies the resiliency of the Phoenix players who have bonded together and are on the brink of making the state playoffs. A program that had only two victories in the three previous years is 5-2 heading into its regular-season finale Saturday against Rocky Mountain Lutheran at Recht Field in Boulder. A victory would give the Phoenix a good chance to slip into the 16-team playoff field.
Romero is in his first year at Justice, having previously attended Centaurus High School. Like most of his teammates, he was on the fast route to dropping out. Now he’s a team leader, and focused on obtaining his GED, with plans to attend Front Range College. He and his girlfriend are expecting a son in three weeks.
Romero credits his unassuming coach for helping get his life on track.
“You’d be devastated to speak to a lot of these kids and hear their stories, and you’d wonder how and why they’re still here, with a chance to do something with their life,” he said. “And they’d all say it’s because of Coach Nels and this football team.”
Coaching is a family affair
Football fate seemed to propel Thoreson into his players’ lives.
Six years ago Thoreson, then teaching summer school at Justice, saw some players working out and followed them to the field to help coach them. No invitation, no formal job offer, nothing.
That volunteerism then turned into an offensive coordinator role a year later and the head-coaching gig a year after that. Now, Thorensen wears many hats. He is the head football coach, the entire English department, the athletic director, the assistant registrar, the lunch administrator and the homework club director. And despite the destructive behavior he polices throughout an average 12-hour work day, he is driven by the opportunity to make sure players such as Romero don’t squander their last chance at high school.
“One of the biggest goals for me is to see these kids graduate, because we always talk about that being our payday,” Thoreson said. “And sometimes it takes four years, or five years, or six — but getting these guys to the finish line is a battle we wage every single day. Yet once they get there, the sense of accomplishment and pride these kids feel is beyond remarkable, because for a lot of them, they’re the first in their family to graduate from high school. To see that is worth everything to me.”
The hard-knock process of molding wayward teenagers into contributing members of society has become a family affair at Justice. Nels recruited his father, Rick, a year ago to be his defensive coordinator. (The players call him “Papa.”) Nels’ younger brothers, Neil and Nate, also pop in on game day to help.
Together, the Thoreson men try to make their players understand that why they ended up at Justice isn’t as important as how they move forward. How they overcome adversity.
“We show them not only how to win, but how to lose,” Rick Thoreson said. “We use that as a positive force in their lives to where if they get into a sticky situation, they don’t lose their focus and start heading down the wrong path again.”
In that way, Justice’s on-field success this fall has mirrored the growth of its players off the field. Take the case of junior running back and defensive tackle Abraham Dauphinais, who is dealing with the loss of his mother last month to breast cancer.
That heartbreak made Dauphinais consider walking away from school, getting back to his old ways out on the streets. But the pull of football made him reconsider.
“This team is something for me to do after school instead of going out and partying, going out and smoking with my friends and all that stuff,” Dauphinais said. “I’ve been having lots of conversations with Nels and Papa about that, because I wanted to quit the team at one point after my mom passed away.”
Not only did Dauphinais decide to stay, he is putting a priority on attendance and academics.
“This is the first year of my high school career that I’ve actually stayed in school for a couple months and not been in trouble all the time,” he said. “I haven’t missed a class here yet, and my main goal is to graduate for my mom, because that’s what she wanted me to do, and then hopefully I can go to college and play college football for her too.”
Romero, whose impending fatherhood has deepened his gratitude for the small amount of time he has left with his teammates, said the family feel of this year’s team has helped players such as himself and Dauphinais get through the instability in their personal lives.
Most of the Justice players have to work part time to help pay bills at home. Many don’t live with their biological parents. They reside with aunts, uncles, grandparents or, as in Romero’s case, his girlfriend’s mother. Thus, many of the Phoenix came out for football looking for a family as much as an after-school activity.
“Abe lost his mom, which is all he’s ever had, but I think when he looks back on the season he’s going to say, ‘I lost so much, but I gained so much in return as far as brothers and the team and something I’m never going to forget,’ ” Romero said.
Looking to finish strong
Justice has 21 players on its roster, an unusually high number for a school with massive turnover. Last season it finished with eight, just enough to field a team.
Despite the patchwork nature of the program, it’s turnaround stories such as that of Romero, Dauphinais and senior starting quarterback Julio Marquez that prove to Thoreson there is more than meets the eye on the lineless grass at LaMont Does Park.
Thoreson said Marquez was going down “a path of horrible decisions” a year ago. He then came to a life-changing realization that he had to set a better example for his biggest fans — younger brothers age 9, 5 and 2 who come to every game and think the world of their rock-tossing hero.
“Suddenly reality just hit me, and I realized that I’m not going to be young forever and I’m not going to have unlimited chances to right my own ship,” Marquez said. “I realized I’ve got to set a life for myself. I’ve got to set a good example for my brothers.”
As the Phoenix prepares for Saturday’s playoffs-or-bust game, Thoreson deals with drama that is all too routine. Two players quit the team in the past week. Another player is suspended from Saturday’s game “for losing his mind at a football meeting” according to Thoreson, and another is on temporary suspension looking to get back on the team in time to play Saturday.
Regardless of the outcome Saturday, there is a renewed sense of optimism among the players about their life’s direction. Driven by Nels, and Papa, they now know there is something much bigger waiting for them beyond the walls of their tiny school.
“We’ve got kids out here in ankle bracelets playing football, but we’re winning and we’re growing as young men, and that’s all that matters,” said Romero, whose goal is to become a gym teacher. “I’m going to leave here with no regrets, knowing that I did everything I could to better myself as a person.”
