The Mattapan Patriots 14U football players had just completed 20 sprints in the Mattahunt Community Center gym on a recent Wednesday night when head coach Mick Brunache called them in to huddle.
It was time for the final pep talk before the team flew out to Naples, Fla., to compete in the American Youth Football national tournament last week. They had been in this position last year, making nationals for the first time. They fell short of their goal then, and Brunache feared a repeat.
The players weren’t meeting expectations, he explained. Some students missed practice. Others were not in the right formations. The co-captains weren’t correcting their teammates’ horse-playing. He was fed up. Brunache knew his team would need to bump up the intensity to win the national title.
“They think they’re better than you guys already,” Brunache told his players. “Once they see Mattapan, they laugh.”
Players’ noses scrunched in defeat. Some blinked profusely to stave off any frustrated tears. Others turned their heads, avoiding Brunache’s intense gaze.
“It’s up to us to go set the tone, and when I tell you to rise to the occasion,” Brunache said, “you rise.”
Competing in the national tournament goes beyond the results on the football field. This team — and the Mattapan Patriots cheer squads that also competed nationally this year — is there to represent Mattapan, a neighborhood they proudly carry on their shoulders regardless of a reputation soiled by negative media coverage, increased police activity, and decades of political disinvestment.
Add that to the struggles some of the players and coaches are handling off the field. One player had to watch from the sidelines after getting injured in one of the final games before nationals. Another is bucking gender norms and setting an example as the only girl on the team. Brunache himself had been in and out of Boston Children’s Hospital, where his newborn daughter was fighting off meningitis.
The pressures were mounting. Brunache knew it, and his players felt it.
“This is bigger than me, this is bigger than everyone,” Brunache told a Globe reporter. “It’s not about football. It’s about lifting the community, saving lives, and keeping kids off the streets.”
Throughout the Mattapan Patriots’ decades-long history, community has remained a constant, said neighborhood native Elizabeth Scott. Her father was on the team’s board of directors. She remembers trying on her brother’s helmet and shoulder pads as a child. Now her son, defensive lineman Elijah Scott, is on the team.
The Mattapan Patriots “has always been a team that’s family-oriented,” Scott said. “That sense of community is tried and true.”
In the third quarter of the regional match against the Springfield Tigers, Elijah Scott, 14, broke his arm sacking the quarterback. He couldn’t compete in the national tournament but still flew to Florida to watch the team’s final games. Scott said the moment was bittersweet not just because he couldn’t play, but also because his final year with his neighborhood team was cut short.
“I might see some [of my teammates] for football and sports,” he said. “But there’s other kids that I might never see since they go to different schools.”
The team’s recent success has pulled in aspiring athletes from across Massachusetts. Some players commute from Stoughton. One, a teammate recalled, is from Springfield, which has its own, high-ranking youth football team.
Tracey Brown, 14, a Dedham resident who plays on the offensive line and is the only girl on the 14U team, joined the Mattapan Patriots last year.
“At the beginning of the season, there are definitely some kids who can doubt me,” said Brown, who also plays on the defensive line. “But they quickly learn they shouldn’t have doubts when I beat them.”
The team also serves as a mentoring space, where burgeoning teens learn to become productive members of society, said co-captain Anthony Olson, 15, who plays defensive end and linebacker. Brunache pulled him aside many times “for getting in trouble with teachers a few years back,” the student said, and he’s showed up to players’ schools, homes, or even police stations to check on them.
“I’ve been through everything with him,” Olson said.
Each team member pays up to $200 in registration fees, but Brunache estimates that only 30 percent of families can pay this sum at any given time. The American Youth Football and Cheer league, the national league of which the Mattapan team is a part, does not turn kids away because of nonpayment.
Leadership has to come up with the remainder somehow. To fund the Florida trip and any other team expenses, “I’ve been using my credit card,” said Brunache, a full-time MBTA worker.
Theteam also launched a GoFundMe, which has raised more than half of its $60,000 goal. Governor Maura Healey has been the top donor so far, with $2,500.
“Fund-raising is difficult in the inner city,” said Renee Murray, the team’s cheer coordinator. “Some parents don’t even have enough money to buy groceries.”
The benefits of sending these kids out of the state are too tremendous to let funding get in the way, Murray said.
“Taking them out, letting them see how other people act, it really broadens their horizons on things,” Murray said.
For the players who traveled to Florida, the reality that this would be their last game as a team meant more pressure to win. So when they lost their first tournament game against the New Jersey-based Toms River Warriors, “it stung,” Brunache said.
The loss hung heavy in the Florida winter heat, where 80-degree temperatures struck at the Boston-trained team’s momentum. It meant their shot at winning the tournament was over.
It took an impromptu team meeting hours after that first game to reset the teens going forward. Brunache said he asked for the players to identify some cause to play for, beyond simply winning another game.
One Mattapan Patriot approached Brunache: “I’ll play for your daughter.”
The team went on to win their final two games of the week, snagging third place in nationals. The Mattapan Patriots’ 16U and 12U cheer teams also qualified for their national championship, with the older team placing third in the dance category.
Murray, who joined the Mattapan Patriots this year after coaching the Boston Lady Raiders cheer squad, said their showing in Florida isn’t anything to scoff at. Three-fourths of the team were rookies. Finding spaces to practice regularly year-round was hard. And there was the mental hurdle of teammates that didn’t believe athletic training and conditioning were needed to be good cheerleaders.
“We really created this team from scratch,” Murray said.
Next season will present its own struggles. Many players will age out this year, and the teens may go their separate ways. The team will ultimately have to rebuild. It’s an inevitability that made the bonding in Florida all the more important.
Between practices and walkthroughs, teammates packed in as much time together as they could. Even in a spacious Airbnb, six players could be found crammed onto a gray three-seater couch. Another two or three sprawled on the floor beneath, joining in on the fun.
The laughing, joking teenagers were living in the moment. But the coaches, chaperones, and parents were more somber. They knew the teens’ running into one another during a practice, game day, or team outings wasn’t guaranteed anymore.
For Brunache, that means he can’t be there to watch out for some of the players as before. And in turn, they won’t be there as often to look out for him.
Tiana Woodard can be reached at tiana.woodard@globe.com. Follow her @tianarochon.