Nobody needs to tell Mark Willis about the facilities gap between Public High League football schools and every other school in the metro area. A senior defensive end at Vashon, Willis has spent four years playing on fields that resemble moonscapes. He and his 90 teammates have had to share pads, helmets and workout gear. To get to practice each day, they walk a mile to a city park, through neighborhoods where gunfire is sometimes heard. It's a complex mess, decades in the making. But to the youngsters playing PHL football, the explanation is simple. "Nobody cares," Willis said. That feeling of frustration and bitterness is festering throughout the eight PHL football schools: Beaumont, Career Academy, Cleveland Junior Naval Academy, Gateway Tech, Roosevelt, Soldan, Sumner and Vashon. The nearly 500 PHL players know the facilities gap keeps widening because of movement at both extremes. At the high end, private schools CBC, St. Louis U. High and St. Dominic are playing on artificial turf. Clayton recently became the area's first public school to approve artificial turf as part of a privately financed $2.5 million upgrade to its stadium complex. Those fields are the highest of the high end. But virtually every other high school outside the PHL has a decent practice field on campus. And other than Alton and Alton Marquette, which share that town's Public School Stadium for weekend games, most schools also play football in their own stadiums, either on campus or nearby. And the PHL? Its football players are left battered and bruised by fields that resemble vacant lots. They dress in cramped locker rooms with iffy plumbing. They train in small, under-equipped weight rooms. Most travel to "home" games because only three of the eight schools have a campus stadium. That's one factor that cuts crowd support to a few dozen fans per team. "It makes you want to cry, doesn't it?" said Dave Cook, a former PHL player, coach and principal who coordinates athletics for the city schools. It also makes it easier to understand why, for more than 20 years, so many players in the city have ridden the bus to attend county schools through the voluntary desegregation program. They want to play on nicer facilities, in decent uniforms, and for programs and communities that prove through maintained facilities and fan support that they care about the kids and the football program. The results on the field offer painful evidence of a Public High League struggling to keep a footing. This year, PHL football teams are 1-15 in games against non-league opponents, losing by a combined score of 540-75. And that mass exodus explains why the once-strong PHL football factory has become an also-ran in area circles. Anthony Simpson was one of the kids to leave. He started out close to home at Southwest High from 1988 to 1990, then transferred to Mehlville in south St. Louis County for his last two years. "Facilities was one of the reasons," Simpson said. "And also college scouts and things like that. We lost all the time at Southwest. They never would have seen me there." His strategy paid off. From Mehlville he received a scholarship to Central Missouri State, where he starred at wide receiver. Now, at 31, he is back in the PHL as junior varsity coach at Career Academy. "We need (an upgrade in) facilities really, really bad," Simpson said. "All the facilities are the same as when I was going to school. In fact, some of them are worse." The "nobody cares" sentiment wounds PHL coaches and athletics directors in the trenches, although they understand it completely. Soldan coach Terry Houston, who has 40 youngsters in uniform despite a winless debut last year, said, "Kids don't care how much we know. They just want to know that we care." Floyd Crues, the interim superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools, is a former PHL athlete who also understands the frustration. Echoing Simpson, Crues said, "It's the same facilities we had when I was in high school." Except that Crues played for the old Hadley Tech in the early '60s. That makes it more than 40 years and counting of neglect for the vast facilities gap. "We do drive by CBC," Crues said. "That says it all. Our kids deserve the same. That's a priority of mine." He said he has a six-member task force studying the issue of athletics in city schools. "It's going to take some time," Crues said. "I've only been in this job for three months. It's a huge mountain. I know that. But you've got to fight the fight." Eight schools, four fields This is a major battle on multiple fronts. The eight schools that field football teams share four stadiums. One is at Southwest, which now houses Central Visual & Performing Arts, a non-football school. The other three stadiums are on campus at Gateway Tech, Roosevelt and Soldan. The varsity and JV teams at all three schools have no practice fields, so their stadium fields get pounded daily. Soldan has several acres of tempting green space just beyond its stadium fence, next to the defunct Enright School building. But the cash-strapped district sold that land and building to a developer. As for the five schools without campus stadiums, their football teams -- as with most of their fall and spring outdoor sports -- must bus elsewhere for "home" games. Two of those schools, Beaumont and Cleveland, practice football on bleak campus fields. Cleveland has an 80-yard patch with a large sand pit at one end. Career Academy practices at Gateway Middle School, and Sumner and Vashon use city parks. Sumner works out across the street in Tandy Park, which has developed sinkholes. Lining the field with chalk or any other boundary markers in a city park is prohibited, but the team did get a goalpost erected this year for kicking drills. There is no secure place to leave blocking and tackling equipment at the park, so players lug tackling dummies from school and back each day. Because of the time and effort involved in that, the coaches sometimes simplify their blocking drills. "We put a pad on that big tree there," said Jimmy Williams, in his 18th year as Sumner's JV coach. "Then we say, 'Son, go get it! If you're not scared to hit a tree, you won't be scared of anything running.'" Football forgotten? Vashon and Career Academy each moved into new buildings in the past year. But the football situation got worse for both schools. Both teams left convenient situations and now must commute more than a mile to practice. Career Academy's striking new building recently opened at 1000 North Grand, but the football team dresses in a room marked "athletic storage." The new building has a spacious gym but no outside recreation area other than a track for physical education class. So the football team buses to Gateway Middle School on North Jefferson. Unlike Career Academy, which is landlocked, the new Vashon High is surrounded by acres of campus land. But all of it remains undeveloped more than a year after the school opened. So its football players walk a mile to Chambers Park, which separates the Jeff-Vander-Lou and Blumeyer areas. Vashon began using Chambers Park years ago because it was less than a two-block walk from its old building. If Vashon ever gets an on-campus field, Career Academy wants to practice at Chambers Park. "It's a block and a half walk for us," said Schneider, the Career Academy coach. "We wouldn't need the buses for practice any more." Mud or dust Playing on neglected fields takes a toll, mentally and physically. PHL coaches bitterly complain about the battering their players take doing routine running and tackling drills on the rugged surfaces. The evidence is purely hearsay, because PHL teams have no full-time trainers. One is assigned to a PHL team for each home game. And for day-to-day treatment? "I'm the trainer," Roosevelt coach Sorrell Harvey said. "I do the taping and everything else." So do his PHL colleagues. Which means Beaumont coach Lorenzo Brinkley is offering amateur, not expert, medical opinion when he says, "My players are getting tendinitis from playing on those hard fields. And there's so much dust out there, it gets in their ears and noses. They can't hardly breathe. It's ridiculous." None of the campus fields have been irrigated this season. Most were not watered last season, either. Cook, who coordinates PHL athletics, said the sprinkler systems at all four stadiums are out of order. Money has been lacking for years to seed, fertilize or landscape the campus fields. So they are lumpy, rock-hard and covered with more weeds than grass. Cook said the only maintenance done this year has been to mow the scrub cover and to put chalk lines on the stadium fields. Mowing is unnecessary by season's end. The weeds wear off through over-use, leaving a bed of dust or mud, depending on rainfall levels. For the best footing and drainage, a football field should be graded so it has a high point down the middle, gently sloping toward each sideline. On a properly crowned field, the opposite sideline markers should be invisible. On PHL fields, the opposite sideline markers look like a row of uneven teeth. Crues said that to his knowledge, the fields have not been crowned in more than 40 years. "Those facilities at Gateway are the worst I've ever seen," coach Todd Vaughn of Wentzville Holt said. His team played Vashon there last November in driving rain in the state quarterfinals. The field was a mudbath, and the game was delayed so sand could be piled around a sprinkler head that protruded several inches near midfield. Vaughn thought about keeping his team off the field. "I knew the situation was bad," Vaughn said. "I had no idea it was this bad. It's not the fault of the coaches. It's not the fault of the kids. Looking in from the outside, to me it's somebody up above not doing right for kids. "There's a money problem in the city, I understand that. But somebody has to make a decision on what's best for kids. When I see a facility like that, what you're telling me is that these kids aren't important. And that's inexcusable." Self-image is only one casualty of the PHL facilities gap. St. Charles coach Mike Thorne also played Vashon at Gateway this season. "It was horrible, absolutely horrible," Thorne said. "In some places there were six inches of sand on the field." The sand covered a surface so hard that his players were unable to pound anchor stakes into the ground for the kicker's practice net. "It was like playing in the street," Thorne said. "My kids all came home with abrasions and cuts all over them. I feel sorry for the kids who have to play there every day." The Gateway field is in use every day but Sunday. Its bleachers make it a popular choice for Saturday afternoon games; its lights make it the only choice for Saturday night games. Gateway also is busy on some Thursdays with JV games in the afternoon and the odd varsity game at night. Coaches, players are still motivated Safety issues are confined to the playing fields. The stereotyped suburban fear about security in the city is not an issue. "The people part of it couldn't be better," said athletics director Rich Grawer of Clayton, whose team played Soldan this season at Gateway Tech. "The friendliness of the people there was really neat. "The problems they have are related to the field, and money. I feel sorry for the kids in the city. It's a shame, it really is." Despite the rock-bottom facilities, football remains a popular activity for PHL athletes. Vashon has 90 players and, until recently, not enough helmets and pads. Coach Reggie Ferguson had his varsity wear the gear one day and his JV team the next. That rotation finally stopped late last month, when new gear arrived shortly after the Post-Dispatch asked Crues about the problem. Meanwhile, Gateway Tech has 80 players despite a lack of helmets. Gear is limited because each PHL school has a yearly budget of $5,000 to outfit and equip its entire sports program, boys and girls. That's down from appoximately $20,000 per school five years ago. The facilities gap is compounded by other obstacles. There are no freshman teams in the PHL, just varsity and junior varsity. Each football program has only four paid coaches, two varsity and two JV, compared with at least twice that for most outside schools. The overworked coaches have little time to scout or watch game film. Yet the football coaching corps, mostly a young and gung-ho lot, manages to stay motivated. "It's tough," said Gateway Tech coach Kurtis Downing, a sixth-year coach at age 35. "But I don't let it be an issue. You just go and you just do. If kids see me complaining, it's a domino effect. It gives them an excuse and it gives them fuel to complain." Thursday: Is there a solution to improving facilities in the PHL?