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Silk City Steelers merge with Paterson Cardinals to form "The Silk City Cardinals"!
March 15, 2007 --
Last year the SILK CITY STEELERS emerged as a new team in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Started by Ken Eatman, Anthony James, and Darris Edwards, the STEELERS quickly became a team to be respected in the Bi-County Junior Scholastic Football League. The Pee-Wee and Junior Divisions both made the playoffs. Our Senior Division also had what we consider to be a great season in which they never gave up. After starting 0-3, they went on to be victorious in 3 staight games and finished the season by winning 4 of the last 5 games.
While the Pee-Wees lost in the first round of the playoffs, our Juniors made it to the championship. We lost that game 13-7 but our Juniors played with a tenacity that is rarely seen at this level of football. They were outstanding throughout the season, showing good sportsmanship and great play. We are extremley proud of our players, parents and coaches! What a first season!!!
Now the Steelers have come together with the Paterson Cardinals, another new team, to form the SILK CITY CARDINALS. This merger has been beneficial to both sides as we begin to build a solid program for the Paterson Youth. Thanks to Mike "Pops" Adams of the Cleveland Browns (formely with the San Fransisco 49ers) and Gerald Hayes of the Arizona Cardinals, we are on our way!!! They have given us a great helping hand to get things going. Kudos to them for giving back to the community. May we wish them both the best of luck this upcoming season.
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Adams joins Browns as defensive backfield depth
April 2, 2007 --
The Cleveland Browns added veteran depth and a possible No. 3 safety on Monday, signing former San Francisco part-time starter and free agent Mike Adams to a two-year contract.
Despite starting 18 games in three seasons with the 49ers, including 10 starts in 2005, Adams did not receive a restricted free agent qualifying offer, which would have provided San Francisco a right of first refusal. The decision to not tender Adams a qualifying offer meant he was free to sign with another franchise.
Adams, 26, should be a solid addition to the interior of the Cleveland secondary, where there is little depth behind young starters Sean Jones and Brodney Pool -- both of whom are beginning to play up to their potential. Adams could join Pool and Jones, both former second-round draft choices, on the field in nickel situations.
Adams was signed by the 49ers as an undrafted college free agent in 2004. He played sparingly in his rookie season, appearing in eight games, then earned the starting free safety job in 2005. In addition to 10 starts that year, he started the first eight games in 2006 as well.
The former University of Delaware standout recorded 147 tackles, five interceptions, eight passes defensed, one sack, one forced fumble and two recoveries in his three seasons with the 49ers. In 2005, he had a career-best 68 tackles and tied for the team lead with four interceptions.
Adams received modest interest from other teams in the first month of the free agent period, but determined that the Browns offered the best opportunity for him to get back to being a regular contributor and to play more than just a special teams role.
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NFL players give back to North Jersey
June 29, 2007 --
By ART STAPLETON
STAFF WRITER
It's not about the money.
Pro athletes utter the phrase and the conditioned response from all of us is often quite cynical: cue the eye roll and incessant laughter.
Yet this time, three football players from Paterson have made sure it's really not about the money. That's why it's free.
Mike Adams, Gerald Hayes and Marcel Shipp grew up together, sharing childhood aspirations of one day reaching the National Football League. More than a decade later, the trio of friends is living their dream: Adams with the Cleveland Browns, Hayes and Shipp teammates with the Arizona Cardinals.
Now they've decided to give back, putting together a day of football clinics for sixth, seventh and eighth graders from North Jersey. The sessions, free of charge, will be held Saturday at their high school alma mater, Passaic County Technical Institute in Wayne.
Nearly 300 children already have signed up to attend and registration will remain open until 9 a.m. Saturday, when the event is set to begin.
Image is everything in sports these days, especially in the NFL, with Adam "Pacman" Jones and Tank Johnson grabbing headlines for their off-the-field misbehavior.
Shipp has been in the league the longest, having made the leap from Division I-AA University of Massachusetts to the pros, recently extending his contract with the Cardinals. Hayes and Adams were high school teammates, the star linebacker and the unsung quarterback, for the 1998 North 1, Group 4 champions.
They could not afford to attend showcase camps when they were younger, let alone pay for instruction from professional athletes. It's one of the reasons they won't ask for a dime this weekend, refusing to put a price tag on insight that could help youngsters reach dreams of their own.
Adams, Hayes and Shipp were aspiring pros at one time, too.
More special than what they have become is the fact that none of them has forgotten where he came from.
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Paterson youth team denied membership by league
March 6, 2008 --
By KEITH IDEC
HERALD NEWS
PATERSON -- NFL players Mike Adams and Gerald Hayes raised $15,000 at a beefsteak dinner Tuesday night to help fund four football teams they sponsor in their hometown, with plenty of help from the Totowa-based Murph Boys Charitable Association.
Now their Paterson Cardinals need help finding someplace to play.
The Cardinals, three tackle teams comprised of 115 Paterson youths who range in age from 8-14, played the past two seasons in the Bi-County Junior Scholastic Football League. But the league's president, Jason Elwell, recently informed the Cardinals' coaches through a third party that the organization had been denied permanent membership in what is now a nine-team league.
According to Paterson Recreation director Benjie Wimberly, the third party, all Elwell would tell him was that the Cardinals were denied acceptance due to what Elwell deemed an unauthorized change in team colors and name before the 2007 season.
The team's coaches contend that the color changes and the name change (the Cardinals were the Silk City Steelers in 2006) were approved in April. They cannot comprehend why the teams were allowed to play the entire 2007 season without a single mention of the changes from the league's administration.
None of the Cardinals' coaches were permitted to attend a Jan. 22 meeting when the permanent members of the league voted 5-4 against granting the Paterson Cardinals permanent membership.
The Cardinals' coaches had hoped to appeal the voting at a Feb. 26 meeting, but their request was denied.
"I think it's a major injustice to not grant them membership because they changed their team colors," Wimberly said. "It's totally ludicrous. It's insulting that the kids won't be given the opportunity to play in a very competitive league."
The BCJSFL consists of teams from Cliffside Park, Englewood, Fort Lee, Palisades Park, Ridgefield, River Dell, Secaucus, Weehawken and Westwood.
Voting on the Cardinals' permanent membership for the 2007 season ended in a 4-4 tie because Ridgefield's representative didn't attend the January 2007 meeting. The nine teams later voted unanimously to instead grant the Paterson Cardinals another season of probationary status. Rashone Carter, the Cardinals' vice president and a Paterson firefighter, and Ken Eatman, the Cardinals' president and an eighth-grade teacher at Paterson's School No. 10, said that Secaucus, the team Elwell serves as head coach, voted against the Cardinals this year, after voting for their inclusion in 2007.
Elwell could not be reached for comment.
Travel wasn't an issue in excluding the Cardinals, despite that all the aforementioned teams traveled from Bergen County or Hudson County to play road games against them. League members expressed concern following the Cardinals' first season in 2006 about the condition of their home field, at Totowa Oval in Paterson, so the Cardinals played a second season on a probationary basis in 2007. The Cardinals moved their home games to a more satisfactory field at Passaic Tech, where Adams, a safety for the Cleveland Browns, and Hayes, a linebacker for the Arizona Cardinals, were teammates in the late 1990s.
Carter, one of the Cardinals' 25 volunteer coaches, and Eatman said that in addition to upgrading their home field, they complied with league rules regarding sponsorship, equipment and sufficient squad strength in 2007.
"We don't want to be where we're not wanted, but if it's going to be where we're going to have these players and these (45) cheerleaders having nothing to do, I want to fight this to the max," Carter said. "We just want to let them know that they can't just say, 'Well, you guys changed your colors, so keep your kids in Paterson.' That's basically what they said to us.
"If we were fighting at the games or throwing stuff on the field, and other parents were scared to come to our homes, then you're talking about something legitimate that we didn't handle on our part. But when you give us the reason that, 'Because you guys are named the Cardinals, and not the Steelers, now you can't play here,' after playing an entire season without any problems, that's not going to fly with us."
Carter and Eatman suspect that the improvement of their teams factored into the rejection.
Their team in the senior division (ages 12-14) went 8-2 and reached the playoffs in 2007, following a 4-5 finish in 2006. Their teams in the junior division (ages 10-12) and the pee wee division (ages 8-10) were better in 2007 as well, going from 7-4 and 6-4 to 7-3 and 8-0-1, respectively. The Cardinals' pee wee team lost in its championship game. (The Cardinals' flag football team, for players ages 5-7, is a member of a Paterson-based league.)
Now their coaches must tell them they won't get another opportunity to improve in BCJSFL play in 2008.
"These kids already face a lot of rejection in their lives," Eatman said. "Some have been rejected by parents, sadly. And I just feel like, me as a grown man, I can deal with rejection. But it's going to be hard for me to go and tell these kids we didn't get accepted into the league. And to not really have a valid explanation for them, to say, 'This is why,' then they're going to be left to draw their own conclusions. I can only imagine what they'll be thinking."
If the Cardinals cannot find a league in which to play this fall, despite sponsorship from two NFL players, some of the players could be divided among the three other organizations that field similar programs affiliated with the Paterson Recreation Department.
The Paterson Bulldogs play in the Pop Warner League, the Paterson Knifty Knights are members of the Hudson County League and the Paterson Mustangs play in the Twin Valley League. The Hudson County and Twin Valley leagues have previously permitted only one team apiece from Paterson, a city of roughly 150,000 residents. And Pop Warner's weight restrictions would prevent about a third of the Cardinals from competing in their age groups, according to Carter and Eatman.
Adams is most concerned that some of the Cardinals might turn to less constructive alternatives if their teams are disbanded.
"This isn't about us," Adams said. "It's about the kids. There could be about 120 kids that'll be out there doing God knows what. We had given them something to do. We had them getting their grades right. God only knows what they're going to turn to if football isn't there. These kids should be given a chance. All we're asking for is a chance."
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