All too familiar with grief, Chester High football players reach out to Roxborough

Chester High School senior Colin Ferrell recognized the expressions staring back at him when he and his fellow football captains visited Roxborough High and its players a few days after assailants shot and killed their 14-year-old teammate, Nick Elizalde, and wounded four others following a scrimmage near the school.

At just 17 years old, Ferrell has already become well-acquainted with the pain and loss that death brings, but he still wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he walked into Roxborough High School.

» READ MORE: For area football coaches, the tragedy at Roxborough High hits home

Empty hallways and eerie silence educated him quickly.

“Then I saw the looks on those kids’ faces,” Ferrell said in a telephone interview. “I just told them, ‘I know what y’all are going through. Y’all don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to respond to me. I can just look at you and I know, and it’s all love from Chester to Roxborough, from me to every one of you.’”

Still grappling with its own grief after the killings and tragic deaths of several of its players and close friends, the Chester football program hopes sharing its experiences can help others.

“I wanted [my team] to understand this is where you show your light,” said Chester coach LaDontay Bell. “This is where you show people what’s under the helmet matters.

» READ MORE: Roxborough junior varsity team’s return to the field was bigger than football

“I wanted our players to be an example that others need to see,” he added later, “so we could show the light in this dark situation.”

Ferrell still remembers dropping his phone and crumbling to the floor of his bedroom when he learned that one of his best friends, Ny’Ques Farlow-Davis, had died after being shot several times in May 2020.

The community was still mourning the March shooting deaths of Edward Harmon, 15, who played football and basketball at Chester, and Tayvonne Avery, 15, who was also a Chester student.

Farlow-Davis was just 13. Ferrell was 14 then. They had played football together for the Chester Panthers youth team. Ferrell was the quarterback. Farlow-Davis was a star receiver.

“Then to have that person snatched away from you at 13 years old, one of your best friends taken away like that,” he said, his voice trailing off.

“That was the first time I ever went through something like that,” he added.

» READ MORE: How to talk to kids about the Roxborough High School shooting

Two months later, another friend, 18-year-old Tazuan Thomas, who played football at Sun Valley High, died in a car accident.

A month later, a third friend, Paris Blackwell, 18, died suddenly from a medical condition.

“They were all constant wake-up calls,” Ferrell said. “It was like, ‘You’ve got to grow up now. You’ve got to get out of here.’”

» READ MORE: For area football coaches, the tragedy at Roxborough High hits home

The preceding months had already been stressful, Ferrell said, because the pandemic had forced the relative isolation of cyberschool upon him.

Then he distanced himself from friends and family, retreating to his room, alone with his thoughts, alone with his tears.

His teammates and coaches, however, eventually helped him emerge with new perspectives, new thoughts about life, and plans for his future.

“It brought us closer in a sense,” he said. “We were all crying on the phone together. I was calling my teammates saying, ‘I love you, bro. Stay safe.’”

It turns out, that type of personal growth after traumatic events doesn’t have to be uncommon, under the right conditions. It’s also possible that Ferrell’s willingness to share his journey could help others navigate theirs.

H’sien Hayward was just 16 years old when a car accident left her paralyzed.

Long before she became a Harvard-educated clinical psychologist, Hayward was a scared high school athlete in a hospital bed, listening as a psychologist explained that she could expect about two years of deep depression, suicidal thoughts, and possibly substance abuse after the accident.

She realizes now that it likely wasn’t his intent, but those words made her assume those were the only options available.

Fortunately for Hayward, she eventually met others in wheelchairs, who she says were young, fun, and had a completely different outlook.

» READ MORE: Roxborough High School is getting $500,000 for security enhancements

“It broke down those assumptions,” Hayward said in a telephone interview, “and that’s really what post-traumatic growth is.”

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s. The duo defined PTG as “positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with a major life crisis or a traumatic event.”

Their theory holds that PTG often results in positive outcomes in five general areas: a greater appreciation of life, stronger relationships with others, an increase in the perception of one’s personal strength, the realization of new possibilities in life, and a spiritual change.

Hayward, who practices in California, researched PTG at Harvard.

“I wanted [my team] to understand this is where you show your light. This is where you show people what’s under the helmet matters.”

She says it can be helpful to the healing process if people know that in addition to the negative effects often associated with trauma, it is also possible to experience positive personal growth.

When left to their own devices after a traumatic experience, she added, some will assume that bad things will continue to beget more bad things.

“It’s about breaking down our fundamental assumptions about the way the world works,” she said, “and then rebuilding new ones that allow for a new reality.”

» READ MORE: Your questions about the Roxborough shooting, Philly’s gun ban and safety procedures, answered

For Ferrell, who attends STEM Academy in the Chester Upland School District, that meant a greater appreciation for friends and family and a stronger sense of determination.

“It completely changed the way I think,” he said. It also meant more appreciation for his mother, Toni Ferrell.

“She has influenced me a lot,” he said. “Nobody else was here during the times my mom was barely making ends meet and we were boiling water to put it in the bathtub to take baths. She’s taught me so much, she’s given me so much, she keeps a roof over my head. I know some people say, ‘That’s what a parent’s supposed to do.’ Not all parents do that.”

Though he still struggles with the pain of losing his friends, he has also become more focused on his future and the possibilities it could provide.

» READ MORE: Grief over gun violence is weighing down Philly students

Hayward added that PTG is not a “pain-free process,” nor does it mean the person will no longer feel grief. She also stressed that PTG can be achieved organically by oneself or it can be facilitated by “helpful others.”

Ferrell seems to have no shortage of those.

He has sought and found positive male role models, watched them, mimicked them, learned how they achieved their goals, and then plotted a similar course.

Edward Nelson Jr. graduated from Chester in 2016 as class president, homecoming king, and valedictorian. He later became a football standout at Morehouse College.

Now he’s an assistant coach at his alma mater with Ferrell as a 5-foot-11, 160-pound shadow.

“Everything he does I’m not too far behind,” Ferrell said of Nelson. “I’m just watching. I’m putting tabs on everything he does.”

A defensive back, Ferrell has a 3.8 GPA, takes advanced placement courses, and has eyes for Nelson’s “triple crown.” He is also contemplating a historically Black college or university.

He even wears Nelson’s No. 27 on the field.

For Bell, the head coach at Chester since 2016, that is all part of the plan.

“It’s not about football for me,” Bell said in a phone interview.

“We’re much more than coaches here,” he added. “Chester is a rough space to maneuver through. There are some bright spaces, so we’re trying to get our young men to see the brighter days as opposed to the darker ones.”

Days after the killing of Elizalde, a freshman at Saul High School, Bell and Chester Upland School District Superintendent Craig Parkinson brainstormed via text.

They wanted to help but weren’t sure how.

» READ MORE: Lives Under Fire: A look at Philly’s gun violence crisis through the eyes of those experiencing it.

Then Bell asked for permission to take his five captains to Roxborough so they could express condolences, pay respects, and share their own story.

“We’ve experienced this so many times over with losing young men on our football team,” Bell said. In 2017, Zion Abdullah, 16, was another player shot and killed, this time on his way to school in the morning.

“We coach the game, we love the game, but I’m about building young men,” Bell said. “What’s under the helmet, that really matters to me.”

So Bell, his five senior captains — Ferrell, Jabree Davis, Noble Thompson, Cymeer Brown, and Malachi Holmes — and a potted plant made the 20-plus-mile trek to Roxborough.

“Plants last, flowers die,” Bell said of the intention. He added that Chester — at Ferrell’s suggestion — would wear Elizalde’s initials on a decal on each player’s helmet for the rest of the season.

Mike Stanley, who started coaching at Roxborough in 2005, has had players die or be killed after graduation, but to his recollection, never while still part of the team.

“There’s really no playbook for this,” Stanley said in a phone interview. “This is such a unique situation. We’re just making it up as we go along.”

Stanley said not all of his players were in school when Chester arrived, but those in attendance met the visitors in Stanley’s English classroom.

“I was incredibly thankful, appreciative, and shocked,” Stanley said. “But the outpouring of well-wishes we’ve gotten from coaches in the Public League, other coaches, people on the street, has also been unreal.”

Stanley said he gave the plant to officials at Saul so they could plant it on its campus.

“When it comes down to it,” Stanley said, “we’re all a unique fraternity — coaches and football players.”