Click! Clack! BANG!
Pita Taumoepenu, 17 years old at the time, was supposed to be watching his younger cousin’s peewee-league practice. But the action erupting on the field behind him was louder, wilder, bigger and impossible to ignore. The local high school football team – boys his age – was beginning its own practice. He kept turning around to see what was happening.
Taumoepenu, the 49ers rookie defensive end, had just arrived in the United States. He was born in Texas. But when he was a few months old his mother sent him to Tonga to live with relatives who raised him until he was a junior in high school.