On the first day of school in September, Jermaine Eloi, a quarterback for the Dorchester Eagles Pop Warner football team, left his home in a gang hot spot in Dorchester. On the sidewalk was a memorial — candles, a teddy bear, a Red Sox cap — to a 21-year-old father who had been shot to death in the street the night before.

At practice this fall, Eloi handed off the football to running back Darius Perryman, who lives in gang territory in Roxbury. Perryman followed blockers who live in neighborhoods of South Boston, Jamaica Plain, and Mattapan that are gang turf.

These are the Eagles, a social experiment in saving lives that is bringing together children from rival neighborhoods and teaching them that unity can conquer violent impulses in a city splintered by youth gangs. The teammates must navigate neighborhood crime zones where their safety can hinge on how they respond to one of the most hazardous questions on the streets: “Where are you from?’’

Sunday brought a ray of success. The team beat a foe out of New Britain, Conn., 14-8, advancing to the national championships early next month in Florida.

With backing from Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Governor Charlie Baker, Eagles coach Tony Hurston conceived the project after one of his former players, 16-year-old Jonathan Dos Santos, was shot dead in the street, allegedly by a boy his own age, in 2015, just blocks from the team’s field.

The alleged killer had played against Dos Santos a year earlier with a team from Mattapan.

“I realized they shook hands after that game, never knowing that one of them was going to take the other’s life,’’ Hurston said. “I said to myself, ‘What if they had gotten to know each other outside of football?’ I wanted to find another way to get ahead of this kind of violence.’’

None of the Eagles, aged 13 to 15, is a known gang member. But each is vulnerable to the pull of the streets, and many have come to recognize the benefit of finding common ground with kids from rival turfs whose paths they otherwise might not cross.

“This is bigger than football to me because of the bond and the brotherhood,’’ Perryman said as the Eagles prepared to play Sunday for Pop Warner’s New England championship.

Perryman said the experience has taught the team’s 27 players that “we all got each other’s backs when it comes to being in the streets’’ — a sentiment that Walsh and the program’s organizers, including the nonprofit Youth in Crisis Ministry, hope will spread in their neighborhoods.

Walsh, who has helped raise money for Pop Warner programs throughout Boston, took a special interest in the Dorchester team’s initiative.

“I commend them on everything they can do to help us, particularly around gang violence, because the 13- to 15-year-olds are at a very sensitive age,’’ Walsh said. “If we can get them involved in sports, we have a better chance of helping them not be influenced into a gang.’’

The Eagles provide an array of support services, including free meals, mandatory library sessions, academic progress reviews, and social events to build friendships and trust. Their motto is “bigger than football,’’ meaning success is about more than winning games (their record is 11-1).

Baker has helped by permitting the team to use state-managed parks in Dorchester and Hyde Park during the summer as safe havens outside of football season. The effort is part of Baker’s Summer Nights Initiative.

“Coaches Hurston and [Leroy] Peeples have been instrumental in spearheading a great program to combat youth violence and raise awareness, and we look forward to more success in the future,’’ said Baker’s spokesman, Brendan Moss.

The Boston Miracle

For better or worse, Hurston, the 48-year-old Eagles coach, has spent most of his life building street credibility in Boston. He is known by gang leaders and their predecessors both for once running among them and for turning his life around.

A former Hyde Park High School football standout, Hurston was “making fast money and chasing the nonsense,’’ he said, when he was shot five times outside a bar in Mattapan when he was 21.

A few years later, he was living fast in the music business, working with the rap group Made Men. In 2000, he was one of three suspects with ties to the group that was charged with trying to kill then-Celtics star Paul Pierce at a club in the Theatre District.

Pierce was stabbed nine times and Hurston was accused — falsely, he says — of striking Pierce in the head with a bottle. A jury acquitted him and convicted the others of lesser charges.

“I went through hell,’’ Hurston said. “But it proved to be that I was still in circles with the wrong individuals and I had to face that and go through the process.’’

Hurston uses the episode now as a teaching tool, the final chapter of his reformation. Yet even before that tumult, Hurston had begun trying to make a positive difference in the community.

In the mid 1990s, he joined his friend, Terry Cousin, to begin coaching the Eagles, with an eye toward giving children refuge from the streets. Gang violence was raging then, with an average of 44 young men (ages 24 and under) murdered each year.

Then came the Boston Miracle. A coalition of church and civic leaders helped law enforcement dramatically reduce the murder rate, and Hurston was credited with playing a role by persuading 12 rival gangs to lay down their guns and collaborate on a musical project called “Wiseguys.’’

Now he coaches the Eagles in how to survive on the streets. When gang members ask, “Where are you from?’’ he says, the teens shouldn’t tell them. With dozens of street gangs in the city, the potential consequences are too dire.

“Just tell them, ‘Nowhere, man. I play football,’ ’’ Hurston advises the adolescents.

He has shared the message with gang leaders.

“These kids play football,’’ he has told them. “They’re not about the streets.’’

Seeing the light

Still, there is danger. Peeples helps to protect the players by monitoring social media, which is rife with gang-related communications. When one player made the mistake of posing in a photo with a neighborhood friend who was gang-involved, Peeples warned him to stop the practice.

“Guilt by association can get you killed,’’ he said.

When a weeping mother called Hurston early in the morning after Halloween to report her son had not returned home from practice, Peeples tracked him by social media to a party and directed his mother to the scene.

Another time, the coaches calmed a panicked parent whose son had been missing for days by discovering he had been “couch-surfing’’ through the homes of friends.

Every Eagles player gets a ride home from practices and games — even one who lives at the Home for Little Wanderers in Walpole while he is in custody of the Department of Children and Families.

The 14-year-old, who cannot be identified under DCF policy, had never played football until the Little Wanderers staff connected him with the Eagles.

Earl Stephen, a director for the home, said he has seen remarkable improvement in the boy’s grades, confidence, and communication skills because of the success he has had playing and making friends with the Eagles. He said the boy’s experience gives hope to others at the home.

“A lot of our kids don’t see any light at the end of the rainbow,’’ Stephen said. “But they have seen him go out into the community and have success and come back happy. They’re like, wow, that could be me.’’

Globe correspondent Shawn McFarland contributed to this report. Bob Hohler can be reached at robert.hohler@globe.com.