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Sports

Tween Football Sensation: Ramell Redd

12-year-old football star helps lead Brooklyn Pitbulls to Pop Warner Championship

At 5-foot-9, with broad shoulders and hands the size of dinner plates, Ramell Redd looks more like a professional linebacker than a 12-year-old kid.  

In fact, the burly pre-teen -- who started playing Pee Wee football at age 6 and now weighs in at 175 pounds -- is a starter on one of the top youth football teams in the city, The Brooklyn Pitbulls, where he plays center.

The Brooklyn Pitbulls won the Division I Midgets championship in the Pop Warner League last fall, with Redd, their youngest player, on both sides of the ball.

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“He started on offense, defense, kick-off, and kick return,” Pitbulls coach Lloyd Rodriguez said in a recent telephone interview. “He basically never came off the field unless he needed a rest.”

In a highly competitive division, where most players are 14 or 15 years old, Redd became one of the team’s most valuable players.

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And it almost didn’t come to pass.

Last summer, Redd announced that he wanted to take a break for a season. But then his grandmother had a stroke.

“That’s his number-one fan,” said Redd’s mother, Nina Marcano, during an interview at her home in Farragut Houses. “She understands the sport more than I do; she was a fan for years before I even had kids.”

For months, the woman Redd calls ‘Granma’ couldn’t walk or talk. She gradually regained her speech, but remains confined to a wheelchair. At Redd’s house on a recent afternoon, she wheeled herself into the living room and spoke with a broad smile.

“We love our team, and our team loves Ramell,” said Granma, whose given name is Jacqueline Marcano.

Coach Rodriguez remembered the day that his star center came back to the field.

“He came to me and said, ‘Coach, I decided I’m gonna play for my grandmother,’” Rodriguez said. Redd’s teammates welcomed his return, eager to get him back on the field.

Since his return, football for Redd is turning into more than just an extracurricular activity; it's starting to look like his ticket to further opportunity.

In a city where the high school you attend is decided either by your grades, your pocketbook or your area code, access to a quality education for a kid from the projects can be elusive. However, Redd's football skills may offer him a chance at a competitive high school education and eventually admission into college.

Ramell has his sights set on Brooklyn Tech or Poly Prep Country Day School, two rigorous New York City high schools known for their competitive football programs. Both will look for a solid grade point averages and high scores on the schools’ entrance exams.

Redd attends Eagle Academy for Young Men, where his grades aren’t quite what his mother nor his coach would hope for. So if Redd is serious about taking his prodigious football skills all the way to the goal line, he will have some serious catching up to do with his grades.

The football coach at PolyPrep already came out to see Ramell play last season, during the Pitbulls' championship-winning game at Poly Prep’s field.

“I watch very few kids play,” said Dino Mangiero, the head football coach at Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School. “There are so many great players in this city. But 95 percent of them, I can’t even talk to, because unfortunately they don’t have the academics.”

Ramell’s grandmother remembered telling him years ago, when they visited the school for a game, that some day he might have a chance of attending that school.  

“Now it’s coming to life,” she said. “It’s amazing to hear that he actually has a chance at Poly Prep.”

To prepare him for evaluation, Coach Rodriguez has committed to finding quality tutoring for Redd.

“We now are very selective and Ramell is one of the few,” Rodriguez said. “We want him to do one-on-one. It’s a little expensive, but I think that through the program we can probably get some money for him.”

“He’s a well-rounded kid, character-wise, grade-wise. Farragut Houses is a pretty rough neighborhood. I would love to see some kind of situation for him that would change his life.”

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