UPDATE: Friendship Collegiate Academy beats Dunbar 48-12.

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Their locker room is a shed and their weight room is an old classroom. The field at Friendship Collegiate Academy, a charter school in NE Washington, is littered with rocks, glasses, sometimes syringes, and sometimes - worse.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen death. We’ve seen robberies. They’ve seen everything,” says head coach Aazaar Abdul-Rahim.

Players say the field is humbling because it reminds them they need to work hard.

Even without a home field the last nine years, Abdul-Rahim has built a football program where college coaches come to recruit. More than half the team’s seniors have NCAA scholarships.

Quarterback Brian White has a full-ride scholarship to play for Bucknell University, but it is Saturday’s game that means everything to him right now.It's the first citywide football championship game between charter and public schools.

Can the charter school team really compete against Dunbar, the defending public school champs?

“Trying to get some energy about this game, recognize that this is the first annual inaugural game and you guys could go down in history,” says Dunbar coach Jerron Joe.

At the ceremonial coin toss, Friendship won. And when the teams tested out the perfect turf at Howard University’s stadium, the Knights celebrated a home field advantage they’ve never had before.