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Tonight’s meeting between two of South Florida’s most storied high school football teams has been canceled. The reason: apparently, gang violence.
Miami Northwestern and Glades Central, which have six state championships apiece and between them have produced numerous NFL talents, including Tommy Streeter, Vernon Carey, and Sean Spence for Northwestern, and Travis Benjamin, Damien Berry, and Santonio Holmes for Glades, were set to meet tonight in Belle Glade.
Miami Northwestern’s football Twitter feed broke the news:
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“Due to unrest in the community, school police, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the area’s superintendent have canceled tonight’s game against Northwestern,” Glades Central co-athletic director Dennis Knabb told the Palm Beach Post.
According to the paper, a shooting near the school last night that forced the campus into lockdown is the main source of worry. A 17-year-old boy was shot during a confrontation that involved “a group of individuals” with an “ongoing feud.”
Belle Glade is a poverty-stricken western Palm Beach town on the edge of Lake Okeechobee that throughout points in its history has had some of the highest rates of AIDS infections and violent crime in the nation. The Glades Central football team is pretty much the pride of the town.
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