PHILADELPHIA _ His stomach was often empty. His body was always weary.
Tragedy, frustration and pain had nearly cost Casey Williams his Division I football promise.
Yet he believed a college football scholarship meant a better life.
But to cope with pangs of hunger that made sleep improbable, Williams, a 2016 South Philadelphia High School graduate, exercised until exhaustion just so his beleaguered body could rest.
Greg Garrett, 46, current trainer of Philly-born NBA veterans Marcus and Markieff Morris, recalled he once ate gum off a sidewalk rather than walk the three miles to Sayre Junior High School on an empty stomach.
Food insecurity has caused high school athletes in the Philadelphia area to cope with hunger in drastic, often unhealthy ways for generations.
A federal government term, food insecurity is defined as "lacking consistent access to enough food to live an active, healthy life." It affected 37.2 million people, including 11 million children nationally in 2018, according to the most recent federal report.
New York-based nonprofit Hunger Free America reported that between 2015 and 2017 more than 176,000 children in the metropolitan Philadelphia area, including surrounding suburbs, lived in food-insecure homes. High school athletes in those households still competed for athletic scholarships that many believed would help transcend poverty and despair, escape violence, further education and build a better future.
"Playing in college was a huge goal of mine," said Williams, 22, now a redshirt sophomore defensive end at Stony Brook University. "But I never thought it would happen because my life was a lot of tragedy."
