"H-Town United"

STORYTELLING CATEGORY

Texas Monthly
04/06/2022

Presented with a subject and a setting that would be all too easy to frame as a sentimental, two-dimensional fairy tale about teamwork and immigrant striving, Tom Foster instead penned a story that stands out for its close observation and narrative restraint. “H-Town United” ends up reaching greater emotional depths and asking more-complex societal questions of readers than the Hallmark-card version of the article ever could.

For months, Foster embedded with the boys soccer team at Houston’s Alief Elsik High School, a nationally ranked program run out of an under-resourced public institution serving one of the most diverse communities in Texas. As he reveals the story of how coach Vincenzo Cox and his players—half of whom were born outside the United States, including in Africa and Latin America—became champions, Foster weaves in details to create a vivid portrait of southwest Houston. The deft layering of these specifics—a national-champion team that couldn’t afford championship rings, the repurposed highway-construction barrels serving as practice dummies, the coach who takes all his players’ uniforms home and washes them after every game—arrives with readers like a slowly rising tide. By story’s end, the audience finds that it has absorbed a wealth of insight about immigrant experiences in Alief and about how the Rams’ diversity turns out to be the secret to their success.

Throughout “H-Town United,” Foster’s prose stands out for its precision and confident pacing. But like the sport at its center, this story is capable of creating unforgettable moments, with Foster expertly punctuating his narrative with memorable turns of phrase. Thanks to Foster’s measured, detail-rich style, when readers reach the piece’s inspiring kicker, there’s no question that the sentiment is earned.

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Submitted by Alicia Maria Meier.