MORE THAN A GAME

“It was a great year,” says a coach, gesturing toward 22 hopeful boys, a youth football team from the most dangerous parts of Los Angeles.

“Great, because we didn’t have to bury a single one of them.”

There they sit, the California Cowboys -- rangy, short, bony, squat, and everything in between -- a group of 12- and 13-year-olds sitting in a tense locker room at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

Their big moment drawing near, some lean forward with eyes closed, others stare at the ceiling, eyes wide.

“Y’all are fittin’ to take this game,” says Gary Robinson, breaking the silence. “You’ve come so far. Your bellies are hungry. Now you got to do what you got to do. . . . “

Robinson, an ex-gangster now dedicated to redemption, founded the Cowboys two years ago at Helen Keller Park, an old gang hangout west of Compton that he has helped turn into a neighborhood oasis.

All season this team has had one goal: become champions. Win the Super Bowl of the Snoop Youth Football League, founded by rapper Snoop Dogg to help revive inner-city football for children.

“This,” Robinson says, “is your time.”

Nobody expected the Cowboys to be here. But they fought through a hard season and then through the playoffs. In one hour, they take the field to play the vaunted Long Beach Browns. Nothing in the world, the Cowboys say, could be better than winning this game.

Robinson and the Cowboys coaches finish speaking, and the boys gather in a circle and begin a loud, emotional, call and response.

What time is it?

Game time!

Whose house is it?

The California Cowboys’ house!

Who we gonna whup tonight?

The Long Beach Browns!

The opponents

When the Cowboys run onto the cold, foggy field, it is almost 9 p.m. and the grass glistens with wetness. Rap beats thud from overhead speakers. Mixed among the music, a public-address announcer blares, “We’ve been here all day, ladies and gentlemen, and now we have the climax, the oldest kids, the championship of the Junior Midget division. Watch out world, watch out!”

When he finishes, cheers cascade from a crowd of about 2,000.

Will this game even be close? One quick scan of the field and the difference between the teams becomes apparent.

The Cowboys have a few big, fast kids.

The Browns have a battalion of big, fast kids.

When the Cowboys warm up, they are eager but loosely organized. When the Browns warm up, they do so with military efficiency.

The Cowboys wear cobbled-together uniforms with nicknames on the back: Hit Man, Transformer, Show Off Jr., Mr. Incredible.

The Browns wear glossy, tight-fitting, miniaturized replicas of the uniforms worn by the Cleveland Browns. As if to underscore their seriousness, there is nothing on the back of their jerseys but numbers.

Kickoff is minutes away. Everything seems in perfect place. And then, suddenly, from the stands, comes a commotion. It’s a fight, and a big, chaotic one. Fists fly, men yell, women fall, kids jump over rows of seats. It ends when a small group of tough-looking troublemakers in big, black coats is ushered away.

How will the Cowboys respond? Many of their faces have now grown tight. While a woman sings “the Star Spangled Banner,” several of the boys glance repeatedly over at the stands.

“My mom was over there,” says one of them, putting his helmet on. “I hope she’s all right.”

The game begins

The first half zips by in a flash. Judging by initial impressions of the teams, the early results are not surprising. The Browns ease down the field on their first drive and score a touchdown.

For a good while, the Cowboys play as if in shock, and the Browns, ahead 6-0, look certain to dominate.

Then, out of nowhere, the Cowboys fight back. They begin running harder, hitting harder, believing. With the first half nearly over, a Cowboys running back scoots across the field and slithers down the sidelines until he ends up in the end zone.

Surprisingly, the score is 6-6 and there is bedlam on the Cowboys’ sideline; hats flying, helmets hitting the ground, young boys walk with mouths open wide, whooping loudly.

“That’s what I’m talking about, that’s what I’m talking about!”

“No way we’re losing to the Long Beach Browns. No way!”

If they can keep this up for one more half, the Cowboys might walk away champions.

Hope at halftime

“This team needs you, Greg,” one of the coaches says. “You are standing around and we can’t have that, man. You’re not playing like we know you can play. Suck it up Greg. . . . “

It’s halftime and the team is in the locker room, more confident than ever but also knowing they need Greg Pope more than ever. Greg is one of the best Cowboys, but so far in this game, he has done little.

It’s understandable. Taller and more muscular than the other boys, Greg struggled all season to make weight, and this day has been no different. He’d started it four pounds over the 158-pound limit, and had spent the day starving himself and running laps and sprints in a heavy jogging suit. He’d lost the weight, but to remain under it, he’d been told by officials he could not wear the heavy cleats, socks and ankle tape the other boys wore.

Greg was exhausted. His doleful face showed it. Just as bad, his feet ached because he’d been forced to play with no socks and instead of cleats he wore what looked like thin, flat-soled slippers. This was a serious disadvantage. But nothing, he vowed, would stop him from trying.

Where does this resolve come from? Like a lot of the boys on the team, Greg is being raised by a single mother on a block so tough a prayer for safe passage is said every time he walks out his front door. He has come to love the men who coach the Cowboys. They father him in a way he has never been fathered. Because of this, Greg’s mother would later observe, he would try to fight through anything for them.

“They are coming apart, Greg,” one of the coaches says. “The Browns don’t know what hit them, man. They’re coming apart. Greg, we need you so we can go ahead and take this thing.”

Greg smiles and nods. Then his eyes widen when he hears shouting in an adjacent room, where the Browns sit. He listens for a moment to the shouts: angry, frustrated voices of adults upbraiding the Browns in ways that would make the toughest dude on a South L.A. street corner wince.

He shakes his head. “Yeah, they’re losing it. . . . Just a little more to go. Just a little.”

Endgame turnaround

The second half begins much as the first ended, with dominating play from the Cowboys.

On their opening drive, from about midfield, the Cowboys run a perfectly executed reverse that leaves the Browns going in the wrong direction and opens a path for a running back to prance straight into the end zone.

On the sidelines, more bedlam, more hats in the air, fist pumps, chest bumps, trash talk . . . and more resolve. This, it appears, is going to be a fairy-tale ending.

But then the extra point is botched. And over the next several minutes bad luck befalls the Cowboys. Their quarterback limps from the field. Their center hobbles to the sidelines. A linebacker splits his lip and leaves for good.

Still, six minutes left, same score: Cowboys 12, Browns 6.

Five minutes, no change. Four minutes . . .

From this point, the game is a blur, lost in a cloud of mistakes.

There is a Cowboys punt that caroms off a lineman, a Browns player who scoops the ball up and runs it to the end zone, and an extra point that gives the Browns a lead.

There is the Cowboys’ last chance. Greg, suddenly energized, carrying the football, heading for a score until his thin tennis shoes slide in the wet grass and he runs out of bounds.

There is the clock, reaching zero, and the Cowboys coaches pleading to the heavens and their young players either sobbing or barely moving as they focus on the final score: Browns 13, Cowboys 12.

This hurts as much as anything has ever hurt.

“We really could have won,” the quarterback mutters, shaking his head, walking from the field with his head down but still finding resolve enough to pat a teammate on the back. “So close, so close. . . . “

Looking forward

After Robinson and the coaches gathered their devastated team, told them they were loved and that they had nothing to be ashamed of, some of the Cowboys stood near an exit, clutching trophies, waiting for rides home.

Be watchful on your way out, a group of adults could be heard warning. Those gang members who started that fight in the stands, someone saw them lurking in the parking lot. They might want revenge. Said one of the adults: “They might have guns.”

While it would turn out that nothing bad happened in the parking lot, it was impossible not to notice the faces of the young Cowboys amid talk of bullets and mayhem.

The boys sighed deeply, looked serious and resolved, but nobody flinched, nobody acted as if this was anything unusual. The biggest game of their lives was over. Now it was back to reality.

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kurt.streeter@latimes.com