DiCesare: Grover's soccer title knocks down some walls
They are 20 players from 14 countries, all of them familiar with poverty and upheaval, some having seen unspeakable horrors. Many spent time in refugee camps. Many are without a parent or two. Each of their stories is deserving of a chapter in a book, a tome that details Grover Cleveland's unfathomable ascent to the Section VI Class B boys soccer championship.
What were the odds? Ten thousand to one? A million to one? Just two months ago some of these players were in a frantic search for spikes, the one article of athletic wear required to get them on the field. The West Siders among them walk home from practices and games, the East Siders board buses and make multiple connections. All are ignorant of the concept of the "soccer mom."
Not a single relative of those who played witnessed Friday night's 3-1 title victory over City Honors at Amherst for reasons incomprehensible to most suburbanites: no car, no money, no knowledge of the area, other familial obligations that consume their time.
Most of the players on the team are of African descent, with a scattering of Asians, and the Islamic Feast of Ramadan requires they fast from sun-up until sundown throughout the month-long celebration that unfolds within the soccer season.
"You see a lot of teams play a lot of non-league games in September because the league hasn't started yet," said coach Telly Forcucci. "By the time they reach now they're 19-0-1, or 19-4, something like that. We're only 14-1 because we can't play nonleague games. These kids, they don't eat or drink from 7-7. They don't do it."
Outside of religion and school, their common bond is an inbred passion for the planet's most popular sport, an ability to bridge language barriers through their understanding of soccer's geometry and application of, in some cases, wondrously honed individual skills. While the United States remains lukewarm to soccer relative to the rest of the world, to these students it's the center of their existence, a way of life, an necessary escape.
"They start with a ball on their foot when they come out of the womb on a clay field with no grass in the Central Congo, Tanzania, Uganda," said Kevin Eberle, the principal at Grover. "And that's all they know."
"I joined the soccer team and it really made me happy," said Yakub Mohamed, a native Somalian who grew up in Kenya.
Forcucci, Grover's fifth-year coach, never dared to dream this big. For years the Presidents played in Class A, where they'd typically win a close opening-round playoff game before being dismissed via blowout. A drop to Class B this season got him thinking that maybe the semifinals were within reach, but to look beyond that he admits seemed absurd.
"Not possible to win the section ever, no," Forcucci said. "I figured we were going to "B' this year and maybe we'll have an opportunity to win that second game. Never thinking a third or fourth or a championship, not at all."
Their unimaginable title arrived on a calm yet bitterly cold night. Adan Mukumbira, who also came from Somalia via Kenya, scored in the 23rd minute off a burst through the middle. Mohamed provided two more goals before the half, and from there the Presidents receded into a defensive posture that nearly cost them. But goalkeeper Alexander Toe had their backs as the Centaurs mounted serious challenges until the final horn sounded and a celebration of mild proportions ensues.
"I think it almost works to our advantage sometimes because our kids don't realize the magnitude of Section VI Championship," Forcucci said. "Outside of their country in Africa, they never leave the West Side. When we beat East Aurora, and all their kids were crying on the sideline, East Aurora kids understood that it was a big game that they lost, a big game that they were in. Our kids, they think it's just another game of soccer. They don't understand how far they're getting in this whole scheme of things. ... On the bus [Friday] night we're saying we have to go to Rochester now and they're saying, "Where's Rochester. How far's Rochester?' "
Dale Holt, chef for the Heritage Culinary Group, and Connie Ervin, an employee for the Rich Product Corp., have adopted the Grover team over the last two years. Connie's nephew, Ameer Mcbeth, is a manager, and every game Holt and Ervin bring hot chocolate and cookies for the players to consume at halftime. Except there was the one game when Holt substituted hot cider as the beverage.
"You had to see the looks on their faces," Holt said. "Hot cider. We've all had hot cider. "They had never had it. It just grabbed me, being able to expose them to stuff they never had."
They are not unique. The halls of Grover teem with students with international backgrounds. Eberle estimates as many as 45 languages can be spoken within the walls.
"We have literally kids coming here who have been sitting in a refugee camp for two years," he said. "We're talking the Darfar section of Sudan, where the genocide is going on like Rwanda 10 years ago. Kids will come in normally through faith-based organizations in Buffalo and they come in and you would not know that a gun was put up to their head three years ago. The stories that we have ..."
The abiding passion the players have for the game erases the geographical boundaries of country and continent. As Eberle said, "Our whole theme for the international prep at Grover is bringing the world into focus. ... We're colorblind to nations."
The school's soccer team is a manifestation of that philosophy, a championship example of the potential that arises when the barriers dissolve.
"We respect each other," Mukumbira said. "We listen to what we say. If you're younger than me or older than me, doesn't matter. We work as a team. We worked hard to be champions."
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