SALISBURY — Salisbury 49ers head coach Brian Miller has been with the nonprofit football program since it began in the late 2000s.

But he said this season was “something special” for the organization’s 6-and-under team.

“It’s just a lot of adversity that we had to come through and it just kept going and kept going all the way to the national championship,” Miller said.

The Salisbury 49ers have five football teams for boys ages 5-14, but it was the 5- and 6-year-old boys who brought the organization its first Amateur Athletic Union national championship.

“They look like the babies but they get on the field and them boys rough. True ball players. True champions,” said the 6-and-under team’s head coach, Mike McLean.

The 6-and-under team had a 13-2 record for the season but won all three games during the national championship tournament in Atlanta Dec. 9-10.

The team had the minimum number of players required to compete at that level — 11.

“No subs. No extra kids to put behind them. It was just all Iron-Man football, just 11 kids. Eleven kids that we went up there with, 11 that we played with and won with,” McLean said.

The 6-and-under team had 13 players throughout the season, but Miller and McLean said two were unable to play in the tournament because of the weekend’s winter weather.

“(The parents) actually didn’t think we were going to get to play because of the weather,” Miller said.

“I was talking to one of the fathers on the way back. He said, ‘Man, I’m real sick right now. (I) wish I would have gone ahead and gotten on the road with y’all. Y’all did it. I’m proud y’all did do it,’” McLean said.

McLean said he wishes the two other kids had been there because “they all deserve it.”

“There’s no ‘i’ in ‘team.’ So we all won,” McLean said. “So I wish they could have been there and experienced that with us. It was a great experience.”

McLean, who has been with the 49ers program for four years, said this was his first year as head coach for the 6-and-under team.

“They transform once they come off the field. Sweet kids. Great kids. … It’s very rare to see kids that young pull together and make something come together and get something out of it,” McLean said.

McLean said he joined the 49ers in 2013 because his own son, who was 11 at the time, was participating.

“I came to Brian Miller and asked him, ‘I love football. I want to be able to try to put something back and give back to the kids.’ Because I never had a father that was there for me. … And (Miller) was like, ‘Well, just come on out,’” McLean said.

He said he wanted to provide something for the kids that he never had.

“That’s why I was really looking at it like, if I can help my son … and these other kids, then it would be something that I could look at and look down at myself and be like, ‘Wait, you’re doing something good,’” McLean said. “So I just stayed with it, stayed with it, and four years (later) I’m national champion coach.”

Miller said when the 49ers went to play in Atlanta, they were representing Salisbury, Rowan County, their families and their organization.

“And I feel like, with this win, you can see something positive that we doing with the kids. … We try to make them better young men for the community,” Miller said.

He said he hopes people will see the win as proof of the good work that Salisbury 49ers is doing.

“And hopefully it’ll bring more people out to help. Because we still need help. We still need money to do a lot more things for the kids. Not just football,” Miller said. “This is an organization, not just (a) football team.”

McLean said the goal is always to pull the players away from the negative and toward the positive.

“We’re trying to pull them back into positive things and keep them around positive things, let them know that people care about them and you’ve got someone that is out there with you that is willing to help you,” McLean said. “You’re not by yourself, basically.”

Contact reporter Jessica Coates at 704-797-4222.