Chapter four of Where Men Win Glory talks about Pat Tillman’s years as a teenager—how he grows to become an excellent football player nationally, propelling his school, Leland High to many wins. Pat is described as an incredibly handsome young man, highly sensitive, introspective and intelligent. It is stated that in spite of his looks and sensitivity, he starts dating later than many others, in his senior year of high school. His first girlfriend is Maria Ugenti, a childhood friend. Pat takes Marie to the Crow’s Nest, a restaurant in the small sea-side town of Santa Cruz, for their first date. Afterward, the two date steadily “until Pat’s death, eleven years later.”
Chapter five of the book goes on with the story of Pat Tillman’s teenage life. It starts by illuminating an incident that occurs shortly after Pat turns seventeen years of age, an incident, involving Pat, which Marie describes in Chapter Four as “big trouble.” The incident takes place the night of November 13, 1993, at a restaurant called the Round Table Pizza, where Pat and his friends are hanging out after playing and winning a football game earlier on in the day. One of Pat’s friends, Jeff Hechtle, has one too many drinks and accosts a group of seven students, from a rival school, who are on their way out of the restaurant. A fight ensues and two of the boys descend on Jeff, with the rest holding off. A little later, Pat and his friends learn that Jeff is in trouble and rush out of the restaurant to help. Pat singles out one of the students, Darin Rosas, whom he beats mercilessly. Later on, he realizes that Darin hadn’t assaulted Jeff and that actually, Jeff was partly to blame for the fight as he had provoked the otherwise peaceful group. Pat sincerely apologizes to everybody for his poor behavior.
Chapter six of the book mentions what happens after the Round Table Pizza restaurant fight. The parents of the seriously injured Darin contact Pat’s family to express their concern over Pat’s behavior. Pat’s family declines to respond in trying to avert further legal consequences. Later on, Pat is charged with a felony for “assault with a deadly weapon.” Also, it is the college recruiting season and Pat is trying for a variety of college scholarships based on his excellent football skills. He lands a scholarship at the Arizona State University but does not tell them of his pending felony charges. Fortunately for Pat, the presiding judge at his trial “reduces the charges from felony assault to misdemeanor assault,” and Pat is sentenced to “thirty days incarceration in the county lockup for juveniles, and 250 hours of community service.”
Chapter 4 is about Pat Tillman's senior year of high school in California, when he shot up in height and played on the football team. He also started dating Marie Ugenti, with whom he would develop "an enduring bond" (page 42). After their first date in Santa Cruz, they stayed together until Pat's death 11 years later. Pat's friends describe Marie as a "civilizing influence" on him (page 42).
Chapter 5 is about an incident in which Pat got into a lot of trouble. A week after his 17th birthday, in November of 1993, he was celebrating a football victory with his friends and teammates at a Round Table Pizza restaurant. When members of a rival team walked in, a fight developed outside the restaurant. Thinking his friend was being attacked, Pat wrongly attacked the wrong person from the party of rivals, and Pat kept kicking this person even when the guy was lying on the ground. The victim, Darin Rosas, suffered a concussion and had to make several emergency visits to the dentists as a result of the fight.
Chapter 6 is about the aftermath of the fight. Darin Rosas' father called Pat's father about the fight. According to Pat's mother, Dannie, Pat was "visibly upset" about the fight (page 52). Dannie wanted Pat to pay for Darin's medical bills, but Pat's father worried that it would be an admission of guilt if he did so. When Pat went before a juvenile judge, she reduced his charge from felony assault to misdemeanor assault so that Pat wouldn't lose his scholarship. Pat was sentenced to serve a month in the juvenile jail after he completed his senior year and to carry out community service. Darin Rosas's relatives were angry about the sentence, though when Erin Clarke (the girlfriend of a football player who was friends with Rosas) later learned of Pat's death, she was sorry that she had known Pat only during that regrettable incident during his senior year of high school.
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