Homecoming on hold

For the boys of Desire Street, a chance to play football in New Orleans is heavy with hope and grief. | Jamie Dean

NEW ORLEANS, La., and NICEVILLE, Fla. -- When 16-year-old Kerry Matthews stepped onto the trim football field at St. Martin's Episcopal School just west of New Orleans, the starting quarterback was near the end of a long day of firsts: It was the first day his team—the Desire Street Academy Lions—played a game in a league. It was the first day that he officially donned his No. 3 black and burgundy uniform. And it was the first day that the 11th-grader and his teammates had been back to New Orleans since the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood they grew up in was all but destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Like the rest of the Lions, Mr. Matthews wanted badly to win the team's opening game on Oct. 10 against Crescent City Baptist School, but early in the evening he said losing everything to Katrina had taught him what he should want most: "To get closer to God, and to help out the other kids at the school, especially the younger ones . . . to be a role model."