00:00As the team of convicted criminals trained for their upcoming game, they weren't feeling too
00:04confident. After losing eight straight games and with their final game of the season against the
00:09private school kids from Grapevine Faith, they figured it would be the same old story. They'd
00:13arrive, the kids on the other team would insult them, and they'd be treated like animals. The
00:18kids from Gainesville State School, a juvenile correctional facility, still enjoyed the games,
00:23which they were only allowed to play in if they had maintained good grades at the school and
00:27hadn't misbehaved. However, each time that they'd play against other schools, it was a reminder of
00:33what they were missing out on as a result of their past decisions. Even when the Gainesville State
00:37Tornado scored, they certainly didn't have the booming support from the sidelines like the other
00:42schools had. There weren't any parents showing up to support them. So, on the Friday night of their
00:47final game of the season, they piled into the bus and they headed off to the expensive private school.
00:52The kids braced themselves for another loss and the ridicule that they had come to expect from the
00:57other kids who just happened to have a better roll of the dice in life than they did. But when
01:01they finally arrived at Grapevine Faith, something felt different. There seemed to be two separate
01:06crowds developing. They figured that there just mustn't have been enough space in the home crowd
01:11stance. But as the team made their way to the field, they saw the crowd come together to create
01:16a spirit line. The team stood around awkwardly and tried to walk past the crowd. They thought they'd
01:21obviously been dropped off at the wrong side of the field. But as they saw a huge banner get raised,
01:26and they read the team name on it, they realized that it wasn't a banner for Grapevine Faith. It
01:31was for them. See, in the lead up to the match, the coach for Grapevine Faith, Chris Hogan, had heard
01:36about the hard time that the Gainesville State kids had been getting from the other teams. And he was
01:40determined to make this match different. So, he sent an email out to all of the parents of the private
01:46school's kids asking them for this match to cheer and support for the opposing team. And in the email,
01:51he attached a list of all of the Gainesville State players' names along with their jersey numbers.
01:57We were going to show them that in this country, if you make the right decisions,
02:00people will get on your side and support you. And it doesn't matter what your background is,
02:04you can make it. So, as the Gainesville State tornadoes broke through their banner to the cheers
02:09and support of parents and kids they didn't even know, they felt a sense of love and acceptance that
02:14they hadn't felt for a long time. The cheers continued throughout the game. And by the end of it,
02:19it didn't matter that Gainesville State had scored less points, they still felt and celebrated as if
02:24they'd won the entire season.
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