Washington Preparatory and Los Angeles High schools played a football game Friday, each a man short.
Washington was missing Eric Sims, who was fatally shot in August a block from campus. Los Angeles played without star running back Jamiel Shaw II, gunned down in March three doors from his Arlington Heights home.
The game, won by Washington 24-0, was played at L.A. High amid heightened security concerns in the wake of an even more recent shooting. Two weeks ago after a Washington Prep game, a former player and a 12-year-old girl were injured in a shooting.
There were visible reminders of loss: L.A. High players wore a black peace patch with Shaw's uniform number; Washington helmets bore decals displaying the initials and numbers of both players.
Then there were the things the few hundred fans who attended didn't see, like tears hours before the first snap. Washington Coach Michael Grimble was startled earlier in the day when he spotted his normally unflappable senior safety, Kingdwayne Solomon, crying in a school parking lot.
"Coach, this is Eric's day," Solomon said. "I miss him."
Je'Don Lasley, a junior receiver for L.A. High, similarly choked up as he delivered a pregame prayer in the Romans' locker room. Shaw used to lead those prayers.
"When I pray, I'm like, if I could say half the stuff he said," Lasley said. "I say whatever comes and hope we're all right."
And then there was L.A. High junior linebacker Rayvione Mouton, who has a tattoo tribute to his brother, Raymond, on a forearm and wears a T-shirt under his jersey that bears his sibling's photo.
Raymond, 20, a former Romans quarterback, was killed in June after being shot three times during a drive-by at his grandmother's home in South L.A.
"My brother was like a father, a brother, a best friend -- he was everything to me in one," Mouton said. "To have two people so close to me murdered three months apart, it tears up my heart."
The violence has touched so many L.A. High students that football Coach Hardy Williams said stories of shootings now barely cause a stir. "It's like, 'What else is new?' " Williams said.
The L.A. High campus is in a relatively upscale area on Olympic Boulevard near the multimillion-dollar homes of Hancock Park. But the school's attendance boundaries encompass rough neighborhoods.
