It's half past noon on a Saturday, halftime, and Coach's soccer team is down by two points. The players stand off-field, no taller than the red flag waving five feet above the northwest corner. So Coach crouches, elbows to knees, car keys swinging from his pocket, swiping the grass below.
His team needs a dose of inspiration from their mentor-just like their Coach did a decade ago.
Dust clouds rise from the adjacent gravel-and-dirt parking lot and drift towards the field. They settle between the beach chairs of sidelined parents crowding beneath a white birch for shelter from the early-autumn sun.
One player's canteen is bigger than his head, and as he tilts upwards to drink, water drips from his chin. The collar of his uniform is soaked- from water or sweat, it isn't clear. When he's had enough, his wrists drop to the hem of his shorts and he waits, listening. Parents chatter, power lines hum, children shout, coolers slam shut and bees buzz.
But the players are only listening to Coach.
Coach's story
When Coach isn't coach, he goes by Everardo Morales, Evie for short.
Young Evie was a pivotal character in a non-fiction book called "A Home on the Field," written by a journalist named Paul Cuadros. Cuadros had come to Evie's town, Siler City NC, to investigate and document the struggles of Hispanic immigrants there. He wound up starting the first soccer team at the only high school in town, Jordan-Mathews, in the fall of 2002- and Evie was on it. With Cuadros' help, Evie and his team won their high school's first soccer championship.
Evia had never played soccer on a team before that.
Cuadros had sought to make higher education accessible to these first-generation Hispanics through soccer scholarships, and it worked for Evie. Evie is one of many whose family came from Mexico seeking opportunity and instead, found it for their children. Now he's a senior at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and will be the first in his family to graduate with a four-year degree.
Evie says his dream to go to school was instilled in him by Cuadros.
"My coach was really my mentor. Most of my team, they were good soccer players," said Evie, "but better students." Once a player, Evie is now the mentor.
Evie is Coach.
Halftime is over
"Fight for the ball, Nico, come on!" shouts a mom from the back seat of her station wagon. Her knees are drawn up into the trunk and her head rests on the window below the hatchback. Her son is too far up-field, too far left. She wonders aloud if he's on the field at all- he's always too late to help his teammates when they need him for an assist, too hesitant to steal possession. He seems distracted.
Coach gives him another two minutes before taking him out of the game. After a conversation just between them, Nico is playing goalie, with a pink keeper's vest.
"The boys probably aren't proud of that color," says another parent. As the opposing team flies down the field, almost all of them taller than Nico, his mom get's nervous.
"Three against one, this won't be good," she says, cringing. When the ball soars to goal, Nico leaps for it, a save accompanied by a standing ovation from his dad.
Three more saves, and his mom is standing too.
Nico was given a partial-scholarship to play on the team. Many low to middle income families can't afford the outstanding bills that come with being in a soccer league. It costs money to reserve fields, to buy uniforms, and to travel to play other teams. The players here pay for their spot on the field- up to $900 per six-month season. Southern public schools, like the one Coach went to, are starting to incorporate soccer into their athletics programs, but they compete with funding for baseball and football. With a growing population of Hispanics in the U.S., and many of them low to middle income, sometimes they are blocked from participating in their native sport.
Not everyone is as lucky as Coach was.
Sunday service
It's a Sunday, and Coach is pushing 35 soccer balls, marked with his initials, onto a concrete sidewalk to fill them up with an air pump hooked to his car. He's with a different kind of team today. The kids he coaches on Sundays can't afford the fee with the premier league, or even the $650 yearly cost for a less competitive team. Some of them can't even afford cleats.
Coach lugs a water cooler and plastic cones from his backseat to the bleachers.
"First thing you'll see, when the kids come out, is them running to the balls," Coach said. He explains that most of them don't have a soccer ball to call their own.
Soon enough, Hispanic kids just out of St. Mary's church are lining up next to the baseball outfield, which Coach has transformed into two soccer fields, separating them with goal posts- one for the under-fives and another for the big kids. The field looks like it hasn't been cut in weeks; Seed stalks grab at Coach's legs as he walks.
"It'll do!" shouts Coach from the middle of the field, placing neon cones and discs on the grass for the kids to use as markers during practice. Mothers and fathers in their Sunday best sit on the bleachers, humming in Spanish together, a hive of post-church energy. Coach walks back to greet them.
"The important part for me is making them feel special for the hour and a half they're here," Coach said. "Sometimes, you work so hard and you don't see anything from it. But when I see the kids smiling..."
Coach doesn't have to finish his sentence. The parents here know that for these kids, Sunday isn't their favorite day because of church. It's because of soccer. Practice is cancelled when rain is predicted for a particular Sunday, but some parents still show up, despite the drizzle. And the kids kick around a ball like the water can't touch them.
A girl in cleats and shin guards blocks a poke from her older brother, who's standing behind the field fence with large headphones around his neck, making fun of her shirt.
"I don't have any silky shirts!" she says, referring to the breathable exercise shirt that Coach is wearing. She looks back at the bleachers towards her mom, who came to the U.S. from Mexico 15 years ago, much like Coach's mother did- to find a better life for her kids.
"Well, I'll get you some," he says to his sister. Their mom says he wants to be a marine, up at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base an hour away.
"He wants to go to school, and they'll pay for it. It's a hard choice," she said, referring to college. They moved here a year ago, to get away from big city life. She doesn't have a license, but public transportation isn't reliable enough here to get the kids from church to soccer practice on time.
"I am scared," she says, glancing away and towards her daughter, who is now concentrating on controlling the ball in the thick grass.
Trouble at home
Evie is well aware of the dangers that illegal immigrants from Mexico face for driving without a license. Whereas citizens get a fine, the only ticket Evie's mother would get is a one-way ticket back to Mexico. She has made that trip before, and Evie worries that she'd never make it back to the U.S.
In Mexico, Evie's mother used to wash clothes by hand with spilas, or metal washboards, for money before she crossed the U.S. border with his father to Chicago, where Evie was born. With so many washer machines here, she was out of work for awhile before finding a job cleaning houses. Life was hard, but the family was together.
That was until Evie's family went on vacation in Mexico City. His father left them there, and never came back. It took monasteries, orphanages, family support from the U.S. and five years to get Evie back to Chicago.
But Chicago was no safer for Evie's family. As a Hispanic, he was born into the Latin Kings, a prominent street gang that promised protection for loyalty. A couple of guys from a rival gang met up with Coach on his way home from school one day, trying to recruit.
"They were like salespeople trying to sell you to a gang," Evie said. He was already in the King family, so he threw the first punch and spent a few days in the hospital for it. Evie can't remember how old he was when it happened.
"I block bad memories so I don't have to think of them," he said.
After that, his family left the city. For ice cream, his mom told him. They never saw Chicago again.
They found a home in Siler City with Evie's grandmother and settled with other Hispanics in the small town, which was dominated by the food processing industry. The town's Spanish speaking population was growing larger by the day, and it wasn't easy to find housing or work, but for the chicken plant that employed half the town. As Cuadro's book details, Evie and his family epitomized the Latino community's struggles with assimilation, poverty and culture clash in Siler City.
The struggle isn't over. Anti-immigrant sentiment isn't as loud in the U.S. as it used to be, but it's still here.
His brother Omar was having a drink with friends in a college bar close to UNC when an argument started about a Hispanic slur said by another man at the bar. It wasn't clear who started the argument- everyone was drinking, no one was listening.
But it was clear who ended it.
"Broken ribs, bruises, he'll be in the hospital for a few days," Evie said of his brother's injuries. "But we're used to it. This isn't the first time he's been in a fight. Sometimes, you just can't ignore it."
Once Omar was out of the hospital, he was back in class. Omar told him not to come see him in the hospital- the gas would've been too expensive.
"I don't see as much of the bad side of being a Hispanic. I have lighter skin, and I avoid saying certain words because it's hard to say them without an accent," he said, "Most people can't tell I'm Hispanic."
Sometimes, Evie sees it on the field- a parent on the sidelines once got angry with him for coaching some kids on the team in Spanish.
"This is America, we speak English here," he recalls her saying. But most parents respect his methods, and his encounters are rarely violent.
Like prey that can camouflage themselves to avoid detection from predators, young immigrants are often very good at blending in: Studies show that they are more adept to learning the language and customs of a new culture than an older immigrant. Even first-generation Americans often speak with a vestigial accent. Evie has maintained fluency in both Spanish and English. He spends his free time in the Centro Latino at UNCW, practicing the language.
Evie wants to be a Spanish professor- he's wanted it since he found out how few Hispanics become teachers in the U.S. But instead of taking the 16 credits he needs to graduate in December, Evie is coaching like it's his full-time job, dropping to nine credits so he can spend more time on the field.
Even with just nine credits, school is a struggle for Evie.
"I'm dyslexic," he said, "I've always had trouble with reading and writing. I'm trying to get a tutor, but I have to pay for it myself." Evie also works in UNCW's OneCard office,, but it's often not enough to pay for a trip home. He doesn't make nearly enough to cover the financial aid he's lost from dropping his credits.
With all that work and little money left over, Evie rarely goes back to Siler City. But even then, the only thing bringing him there is his family.
"I don't know where home is for me. I think home is UNCW; I'm at school more than I'm in my apartment," he said. "It's just a place to eat and sleep."
A hard finish
Coach is teaching five boys and five girls how to dribble and pass. His voice booms across the field, the words Spanish and hurried. The kids are sweating, but lined up, ready for their turn to master the discs on the ground.
"Eso!" shouts Coach when they get it right.
"Oi!" he shouts when they don't, his hands high in the air. After a water break, it's time to scrimmage.
"It's their favorite part of the day," says Coach. " I give them 90 minutes to forget about their life, just like when I played."
Coach splits the boys and girls to play against each other on the small, overgrown field, four against five.
"Red card!" he yells and laughs, signaling for a girl to throw the ball from the sideline. When a girl poises herself to score, her mom's cheers can be heard over the sirens of an emergency vehicle in the distance.
"Vamos, ninos, vamos vamos vamos!" she shouts.
Coach calls the last thirty seconds of the game, but they play for six more minutes. He's running with them, up and down the field, helping the girls who are hesitant to possess the ball, and giving the boys a challenge by forcing them to play as a team instead of individuals. He teases them and they tease him back.
"I've learned a lot from my kids," he said. "You have to have patience."
All are sad to leave the field.
"I want to play again," says a boy to his father as he takes off his cleats in the grass. Luckily, the kids will get their chance to play again. Coach is making it possible for kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds to learn the rules and skills of soccer, just like his coach made possible for him. People in the community, specifically the expensive soccer leagues and corporate business in town, are helping to fund the program. Sometimes there are too many kids and not enough coaches to help.
But if the kids show promise, they could earn a scholarship to play on a team like Nico did. It's a promise that many people risk everything to come here to find- the promise that one is free to be more than what he comes from.
