BEST RIVALRY

You know there's something going on when 600 people turn out to watch a football game featuring four-year-olds. Yet that's what happens, dependably, when these two Liberty City parks play each other in Pop Warner football. No matter what the weight class, from the four-year-old pee wees up to the fifteen-year-old midgets, a game between Gwen Cherry and Liberty City generates an astounding amount of community interest. It's not uncommon for dedicated fans to wager a thousand dollars or more on their teams. In the past few seasons Gwen Cherry has held the upper hand, winning most of the games and even winning a national championship last year in the 110-pound weight class. But in Hadley Park, where the Warriors play, they've hardly abandoned hope. "We started the whole thing," one Warriors booster crows. "Our program was the first program in the inner city. Gwen Cherry was a spinoff from us, and they got all the money from the [Greater Miami] Boys and Girls Club and all these grants from the county so now they've got better uniforms and better equipment and that means they're getting better players. But the one thing they don't have, the one thing they'll never have, is Warrior pride. And without that? Shit, man, you don't got nothin'."