Young Champs Played Through the Pain

Saluted Monday for a best-in-the-West season, the San Fernando Braves said winning the Pee Wee football championship required them to conquer the pain in their hearts before confronting their opponents on the field.

The scrappy 13- and 14-year-olds, who were honored Monday night by the San Fernando City Council, won the Western Division title the day after assistant coach Larry Barrios died in a car crash.

Barrios, 21, was on his way to Las Vegas for the Nov. 21 semifinal game when the car overturned north of Baker. He was a passenger. The wife of assistant coach David Felix also died.

The team got the news in an early-morning phone call.

The players said they were devastated, couldn’t sleep and wanted to forfeit the semifinal contest.

“We didn’t really want to play,” said quarterback Diego Urzua, 14. “We thought it’d be disrespectful to Larry.”

Barrios “was the kind of guy we used to hang out with all day, whether we were playing football or not,” Diego said.

It wasn’t until shortly before the game that the Braves decided to take the field.

“We realized that Larry lived for football,” Diego said. “We played for him.”

They won that game and went on to capture the National Youth Football Western Championship on Thanksgiving Day, defeating a team from Aurora, Colo.

“They played with a lot of heart,” Coach Arthur Ceniceros said.

Barrios, who worked as a technician for an entertainment company, was the youngest of the Braves’ eight coaches and played for the team, which has been in existence for 30 years, when he was a kid, Ceniceros said.

“At the end, it came to be that we were all crying,” said Freddy Ceniceros, 13, the coach’s nephew.

When the boys returned home, they didn’t attend victory parties. Instead, they went to Barrios’ funeral and placed their jerseys on his coffin.