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Jamal warily eyes a plate loaded with macaroni and cheese. He is supposed to meet his two sisters later. They won’t be seeing their mom anytime soon. But he is now on track to graduate along with the rest of the team’s 12 seniors.

“Coach McAllister has had a huge impact on me,” the 19-year-old says. “This team is a family, and our coaches care for us, and we know they care for us, and I know they are going to always be there for me.”

Amani Jones, another player, refers to Mr. McAllister as a second “father.” His own father, he says, is in the “picture.” But his mom, who he loves with all his might, is hooked up with a man who doesn’t treat her very well and beats her down, mentally.

“I could see what he was doing to her and I couldn’t just sit and watch,” the 16-year-old says. “There was an altercation.” (He now lives with the girls’ basketball coach at Phillips.)

He says he doesn’t see Mr. McAllister as being white, so much as being a role model. He is a good man who doesn’t disappear on him and he is there to remind him that he has choices, to hold him accountable for the ones he makes.

“Once you find somebody like Coach Troy, once you find somebody that can help lead you the right way and teach you as a man, how to be a man, it really helps,” he says. “He has taught me to man up and be accountable for my mistakes. What you do — you need to explain it.

“The colour of his skin, it doesn’t matter, because it is what is in his heart.”

Jamal Brown and Amani Jones don’t look at themselves as victims. They don’t blame the world for the world they were born into. And they don’t blame it for Ferguson, either. What happened there, they say, is done.