Are you looking for a football team to cheer for, and maybe not feeling too enthusiastic right now about the Baltimore Ravens?

How about the Liberty Chargers Pop Warner youth football team?

Consider what this West Baltimore-based group of boys, ages 8 to 14, has already accomplished in their first year playing as a team:

• They became state champions last month after winning in the 8, 9, 11, 12 and 14-year-old categories.

• This past Saturday the nine-and-under team beat the Toms River (N.J.) Seahawks in the Eastern Regional semi-finals in Philadelphia by a decisive score of 33-6.

• If the Chargers win the Eastern Regional Championships against the Thornden Park Bulldogs, they will move on to compete for a National Championship in Charlotte, NC, next month.

Coach Delontai Bruton isn’t surprised by their precocious performance.

“I knew we were going to be okay as long as they came out and played their game,” said Bruton, who led the team with practice sessions four days a week. “They’ve been working hard, and they were really prepared.”

The Liberty Chargers’ success is even more remarkable considering this hard-charging team is made up almost entirely of rookies.

“Out of 25 kids, only three ever played the game before,” Bruton pointed out.

Longtime Baltimore youth advocate Kim Trueheart, a major force in coordinating the city Pop Warner program, is ecstatic over its freshman year success.

“It’s phenomenal,” she said, describing how adult coaches came together to work with more than 200 young people.

“We’ve taken all season to do it. Just engaged them and worked them out and trained them, and I’m so proud of them,” crowed Trueheart, founding director of the Liberty Village Project housed in the Liberty Rec & Tech Center.

The volunteer-led nonprofit has for years brought local organizations together to serve youth, seniors and families.

Search for Funding

Bruton and Trueheart are confident the kids will do their best. It’s the difficulty of finding financial support for the team that keeps them up at night.

She and the coach are bearing most of the financial burden of uniforms, equipment, travel, hotels and more, Trueheart said.

“It’s costing me an arm and a leg,” she told The Brew. “So far, I put about $8,000 out. It’s going to cost another $6,000 to $15,000 to get them to the finals and then maybe to North Carolina.”

Trueheart and Bruton have been trumpeting the boys’ accomplishments online and through word of mouth in order to find funds to defray the team’s expenses.

“I don’t know if they’re going to make it past this weekend, but we need to get the word out that we have Black kids from Baltimore who are now the state and regional champions and they need support,” she said.

“We need to get the word out that we have Black kids from Baltimore who are now the state and regional champions”  – Kim Trueheart.

Bruton said he couldn’t charge his players the usual Pop Warner registration fee because his team was new and, besides, he knew most of the families couldn’t afford it.

“I had to make my team free this year,” he explained. “The life people are living right now – it’s hard for these kids and parents. It was very hard trying to get the families to help.”

“When we come back from this trip, we’re gonna go out and knock on some doors with our jerseys,” he explained.

A 2009 graduate of Woodlawn High School, Bruton went on to play for Wesley College and Coppin State University and subsequently got into youth coaching.

Since the days when he played youth football, things have gotten tougher. There was more parent support back then, he recalled, and expenses weren’t as great.

Not all members of the Chargers, for example, have the big-size, high-tech helmets considered better able to protect against concussions. Such helmets cost $300-$400 each or more.

“We need help with that. I can tell you that,” Bruton said.

• For information on how to support the team, go to: https://www.instagram.com/supercharged_9u/ or to Kim Trueheart’s Facebook page.