Soccer Faces/Soccer Stories

My faces #7 and #8 for the 29 faces challenge turned into soccer players - one has a Diego Maradona feel and the other a bit of Roy Keane going on.  They seemed good artwork to blog a few stories from my son's high school season. Long time blog readers will remember that the boys had an amazing season last year, going on a championship run that was truly special and will be remembered all their lives.  This year has been a different story. Nine of our players graduated, and we moved up to a higher division fielding a much weaker team.  They're currently 3-7-2, with two games left to play. We're fighting against relegation. 
But, in the midst of that, there's been rays of hope as well:
1.  They boys haven't given up. They keep trying and, in the last three games, have gone 2-0-1. I think they will finish the season with their heads held high.
2. For the first time in recent memory, none of the boys were removed from the team for poor academic records. The grade cut-off is not that demanding, but the soccer players typically come from disadvantaged backgrounds and we usually lose one or two to poor grades. This year, every single one has managed to stick with the team, and we have many players focused on going to college.
3. We had a wonderful ceremony for our first Friday night home match where we unveiled a sign for last year's championship, as well as the newly purchased and installed signs marking the school's 13 previous championships.  We had at least one player from each of those championship years in attendance at the ceremony.
4. Last Friday night, we had a crowd of almost 200 fans for "Youth Soccer Night."
5. On a personal note, DS Henry has been attending college I.D. camps and showing well.  He has at least one college that is very interested in having him play for them. When a different college complimented his skills but suggested he should focus on non-Division 1 schools, he said he might print that email out, use it as motivation and then send it to the coach after he makes a Division 1 team!
It turns out that there are many measures of success I guess, and even without a shiny championship patch for this season, it seems the boys have done pretty well.  Wouldn't you agree?