It was late at night, and the bus carrying the Ridge View Academy football team was rolling down the highway, filled with teenage boys celebrating their first win of the season.

A half-hour earlier, they had pulled off an improbable feat, driving 80 yards in the last minute and a half to ruin Arvada High School's homecoming in a Metro League thriller.

But as the bus pulled off E-470 earlier this season and started down a two-lane country road, past desolate fields and the abandoned Lowry bombing range, Tyrel Walker, a 16-year-old wide receiver, felt a familiar pain. He was about to re-enter Ridge View Academy - and prison.

"You feel so free, you're playing football, having fun - then you're right back here," he said.

High school football, homecoming, the glow of Friday night lights - they're a natural rite of passage for most teens, as are graduation and hanging out at the mall. But to Walker, football is only a temporary escape, a brief interlude in a highly regimented life inside one of the nation's most unusual correctional institutions.

Ridge View beats the alternative. Here, there are modern classrooms. Dormitories. Vocational center. Library. Athletic fields. Gymnasium. Manicured courtyards. Letter jackets.

No cells, isolation rooms, guards or 15-foot towers. Just a fence to keep the cows out.

But it's still a prison, home to about 400 teenagers who are doing time for a range of crimes, from burglary to armed robbery to attempted homicide and occasionally manslaughter. It's home to boys who still have enough time to salvage their lives, to pick up a GED or a trade, or to go back to high school and play a sport they started to master here, about 30 miles east of downtown Denver.

In fact, what makes Ridge View more remarkable is the athletic program that competes against Colorado high schools, with kids who frequently arrive in handcuffs and ankle irons, many of them as inexperienced in sports as in everyday civility.

"You don't get committed to the Division of Youth Corrections lightly," Ridge View director Bill Wood said. "We get kids involved in some pretty serious stuff."

Added football coach Jason Lane: "We've definitely got some violent offenders out there. . . . This is the end of the road for these guys. Once they're 18, there are no more dormitories, no more unlocked doors, no more open-door policy. There are bars."

'We've got this bond'

Hard-core gang members make up the bulk of Ridge View's population, but even they have a hard time telling a Crip from a Blood without a program, which is why sports are a big deal on campus.

"I've been shot at, had some close calls," said Walker, a former Crips member. "But in here, we're not coming at each other, being disrespectful. When it comes to football, it's another setting. We do what we got to do. We put it aside. We're not messing with each other. We've got this bond."

That attitude doesn't necessarily end on the football field. Like the rest of the population, Rams football players live in dormitories, four to a room. Each has a desk, bed, chair and closet, with clothes and shoes arranged according to a posted diagram. Televisions, radios and doors aren't permitted.

"You're going to get a lot of shenanigans behind closed doors," staff member Brian Anthony said. "Whether it's kids who want to fight, preventing suicides or a kid who cheeks his medication, this makes it a lot easier to catch them."

Each living area provides a television set in the commons, which routinely draws a crowd for Broncos games, especially Broncos-Raiders games.

"Half of 'em pull for the Raiders," Walker said.

Outwardly, Ridge View is deceptively conventional. The curriculum includes core academic courses such as algebra and anatomy and vocational programs from barbering to welding.

Some senior students are allowed to leave campus.

The cross-country team won this year's Skyline League championship, a group of students with a scientific bent captured the state's robotics competition, and a marching band performs at football games.

"We have a wonderful percussion section," band director Will Peacock said.

That was the idea in 2001, when Ridge View opened as a public-private partnership between Youth Services and Rite of Passage, which runs juvenile facilities in four Western states.

The school cost $51 million to build and has room for 500 boys. Though it is within Aurora Public Schools' boundaries, Ridge View received its charter, or operating agreement, from the Denver Board of Education after Aurora turned it down.

Zero tolerance

A typical weekday offers a stream of unusual images: a student returning from a court date in handcuffs; staff members rushing to defuse a potential scrap; head counts to check for AWOLs; students lining up in columns, two abreast, waiting for their marching orders; hard-core gang-bangers confessing their deepest fears in therapy; a mandatory daily three-mile run.

In fact, downtime is rare at Ridge View, where the day begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m., a pace that starts with a 60-day, militarylike orientation program that is designed to break old habits.

Decorum is always paramount, especially for athletes, who risk everything with the simplest of slips, such as a flagrant foul.

"That's a big deal for us. If you're not representing yourself or Ridge View Academy, we're not going to put you out there (for sports)," Wood said. "If we knock someone to the ground in a basketball game, our expectation is that our guy is going to pick him up. We do quirky things. When the opposing team has a free throw, we'll have 300, 400 people in there in dead silence. We want to root for our team, but we don't want to root for the other team to lose. And we don't go for cussing here."

Holding his tongue has never been easy for Walker, whose coaches think has the potential to play college football.

"There's a lot of trash talking (in football). That's really hard for me because I don't like to take words too lightly," he said. "It used to happen in (junior) football. You just want to take revenge on that person (on the field).

"I was kind of scared when I came here. I didn't think I was going to be successful in the program because I had an anger issue. There are a lot of males around here, and I don't get along with males too much."

No shackles, chains

It's 2 p.m. on a mid-October Saturday, three weeks after the big win against Arvada, and Ridge View is playing Metro League opponent Skyview on the Rams' home field.

A pelting rain and cold wind dampen the enthusiasm of Ridge View students, who sit on aluminum bleachers, surrounded by staff members who line four aisles, communicating by radio. Other staff members man the perimeter, some on bikes, watching for behavioral problems.

Escapes are a chronic concern. Every so often, a boy sneaks out of his dorm at night, vaults the center-field fence on the baseball field and makes a run for it, hoping to elude pursuing vehicles equipped with spotlights.

Because of the threat of escapes and disruptive incidents, only staff members are permitted to accompany the Rams on road games. Students stay behind.

"In the four years I've been coaching here, I've never had a kid run on me," Lane said. "We don't show up in shackles and chains and handcuffs. We show up on a school bus, just like any other team. But it's there. One incident could blow it all."

A strong effort against a conference opponent once would have been regarded as a psychological victory for the Rams, who had an 0-10 record last year. But Lane has been devoted to bringing about a change since becoming head coach this year.

The odds were long. His roster, which now includes about 50 players, is woefully inexperienced. One defensive player is 17, with three children, studying to become a welder. He had never put on a football uniform until he came to Ridge View.

"We started with two plays. It was like Pop Warner," Lane said.

But the Rams now run 80 plays and a spread offense, and against Skyview, they rolled to their third conference victory. Walker picked off a pass and returned it for a touchdown and scooped up a fumble and sprinted for another score, diving into the end zone to celebrate.

"We had him apologize to the ref, to his teammates," Lane said.

But on this dour afternoon, Sonny Howse came to the fore. A linebacker and co-captain, he shifted to running back after the starter went down with an injury and rushed for 77 yards, as his mother, brother and cousin cheered him on from the front row.

Outlook brightens

Sharon Howse carries a poem her son wrote when he arrived at Ridge View, a bleak piece that expresses the anguish he and his family have endured since Sonny was arrested for trespassing, the start of a steep decline.

"Is this a nightmare, or simply am I dead?"

But Howse said his outlook has brightened at Ridge View, thanks, in large part, to Lane, a group leader.

"I wasn't very good at opening up to people. But he actually made it so I can open up to him," Howse said.

Added Sharon: "I always said, 'Sonny, you're going to be a Doherty High football star.' Now he's a Ridge View football star. And he just passed algebra. My blood pressure is way down since he came here."

After the Rams' 28-7 win against Skyview, their third victory in four games, Walker and Howse quickly make their way to the edge of the field, where they gathered with family members, lingering for several minutes.

"I used to come to games with him and leave games with him," said Howse's younger brother, Austin. "But at least I get to see him. When he makes a really good tackle, he looks up at the stands and has this really big smile."

Within minutes, however, Howse and Walker rejoin their teammates in the end zone, lining up two abreast while Lane takes roll, making sure everyone is accounted for.

As cars pull out of the parking lot, heading down a two-lane road, the players start down an asphalt path toward their locker room, an unlikely team in an unusual prison.

Click here to continue reading about Valor Christian

Click here to go back to the introduction

Back to Top