Cedric Jones sees a football program and he wants to paint it black.
“I’m bringing my 20 African Americans to Chaparral, and we’re taking dead aim at Saguaro,” crows Jones, referring to Chaparral High’s cross-Scottsdale rival, the paragon of prep football programs in the Grand Canyon State. “[Chaparral] is 98% white. We just tripled its Black enrollment.”
Quadrupled it, actually; at least within the football program. But no matter. It’s a sunny July morning in Scottsdale, a city bedecked with mansions and Maseratis. With the mercury already teasing triple digits, all three Firebird teams—freshman, JV, varsity—practice in shorts and, occasionally, shirts.
