Around 10:30 a.m. every Sunday, they start to arrive.

Smiling young men pile out of cars on cue, shouting greetings in English, Spanish or a combination of the two. They shake hands, bump into one another for quick "bro hugs" and then head out onto the field to play some serious football.

On this day, there are 20 players with red or yellow "flags" secured to their waists. Except for one brave soul in shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, they are bundled against a frigid breeze, bouncing up and down between plays to keep warm. "Let's go! Let's go! Good D," they yell to one another as the game begins.

One player catches a perfect pass and sprints three-quarters of the way down the field, rolling and spinning as other players attempt to stop his progression. He takes it all the way to the end zone for the first touchdown of the game. "COME ON!" someone yells. "Who's got the quarterback? Who's got Juan?"

Without fail, this group has gathered every weekend for the past five years on the field next to Manheim Township's Stauffer Park. They pass and run in 105-degree humidity, flood-inducing rain and blinding blizzards. "We brought shovels out and cleared the field during that one blizzard," said Juan Hernandez of a February 2010 storm. "And we were out here during Hurricane Sandy, too.

"We live for Sunday," said Hernandez, who is one of the quarterbacks. "We work hard Monday through Friday. This is our 'going out.' This is the same as some guys who go to a bar on a Friday night." Hernandez said their wives, fiancees, girlfriends and families understand that Sunday mornings are off limits. It's something they do for themselves, something they all feel they "need."

"It's a stress reliever," Angel Garcia said. "It's like a vacation. We look forward to the next week as soon as this one ends." Carlos Gonzalez, who came to the area from Puerto Rico, said playing football, which is not a common sport in his home country, helped him settle in and get to know people. "I didn't know football in Puerto Rico," he said with a thick accent. "Football is good."

Almost everyone in the group is related in some way. "My brother, uncle and stepbrother and I came out and just passed the ball around," Luis Lopez said, recounting the first time they played. The numbers eventually grew to enough for six-on-six when other brothers, cousins and friends showed up.

"And some strangers," said Tito Martinez, 17, noting with a sly smile that "strangers have to be good." Walk-ons are definitely welcome, Hernandez said, but they must be respectful of how the group plays.

All players hail from Lancaster city and are Latino. They range in age from 13-year-old J.J. to 30-year-old Eric Alamo, who said he plays "because he's 'old' and wants to keep in shape."

Teams are determined by the quarterbacks, Hernandez and Juan Mercado — "Juan One and Juan Two," they joked. They use an old-fashioned game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who will choose first. Even so, the teams, they said, almost always end up the same.

"Now there's like 18 to 25 of us every week," Lopez said. The players are evenly talented, so the teams are equally matched. There's rarely a blowout, but it's been known to happen. With that level of competition and the amount of athletic talent on the field, heated arguments tend to erupt after almost every play.

"You can't just touch him!" someone yells. "We go through this every week!"

"He blocked me on the back. You can't block on the back."

The closer the score, the more frequent the disagreements.

But there's deep camaraderie, too. "Hey, Rambo, you've got grass all over you," offered one player as he helped flick turf off the back of an opponent.

Though tempers flare and the competition is serious, they gather at the sideline when the game ends, pick up their plastic field markers and start talking about "amazing plays," who did what and how strategies will play out next Sunday.

They try to finish playing by 1 p.m. so they can all go home and ... watch football.

"We all love football," said Lopez, who is a Dallas Cowboys fan. Others prefer the Philadelphia Eagles or the New York Giants. So, of course, while they are playing they are also "talking trash about each other's teams," he said.

Several of the players were on their school's football teams. Bruce Hurlbert played for Lincoln Junior High School, and Christopher Negron and Emilio Leonardo played for J.P. McCaskey. Jose Colon, who is studying computer-aided drafting, is a receiver at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, and Shyheim Carter, at Stevens for graphic arts, is a running back. Several in the group also play in the Lanco Fieldhouse indoor football league.

When they aren't playing or watching football, many in the group gather for pick-up games of basketball or baseball at Manheim Township's Brecht Elementary School, or they connect online through PlayStation gaming. "Call of Duty, baby!" one of the players yelled.

"There's a lot of love," Hernandez said of the group. "We are like family. …We are family." And even though there's trash talk and arguments about plays, "at the end of the day we are all friends. We leave it out there."

On the field.