West Side football kids battle toward goal

Young West Side football players are used to doing without, but now they risk giving up a dream: Going to an out-of-state invitational

In a wide-open West Side field, just a few blocks from the humming traffic of the Eisenhower Expressway, the Garfield Park Gators lined up for their daily football drills. They were ragtag, decked in scuffed-up helmets of varying colors and orange or white jerseys that all seemed either too big or too small, depending on which of the 5- to 15-year-old kids you looked at.