Casey Stengel and  George Patton both said if you want to be sharp, look sharp. I have never learned to look sharp, but perhaps I can help other people to look sharp. I’ve never paid much attention to what I wear, but I also know it can be important.

Refugee children all tell stories of harassment, they are, after all, very different than most of the kids they go to school with. They speak differently, they don’t have the money for the the best devices, they often have different clothes they wear every day. They are ridiculed, teased, taunted.

So appearances can be important, especially on the American soccer field, where it is the custom to see rows and rows of wealthy parents cheering and waving their sons and daughters on. I’ve only seen one parent once at one refugee soccer  game, most of them live with single mothers, nobody has cars to drive off from the long hours that they work.

In a sense, Ali functions in loco parentis, and in a different way, so do I. It is our jobs to bring these children up, to foster their pride and hope, provide everything we reasonably can to make them proud.

We surprised the refugee soccer team today with sweatbands and new T-shirts to wear for practice. Thankfully, the team has changed its name from the “Bedlam Farm Warriors” to the Albany Warriors, that much better reflects who they are and where they are. (I was never easy with that “honor,” this is not all about me.)

I never wanted to have the team named after the farm, it was their idea and  I’m relieved that circumstances have changed.

Of course these means we have to get new uniforms sometime in the next year. But today it was a lift for the kids to continue their march towards equality and dignity in the raucous and competitive soccer world of urban and suburban America.

I got them bright red shirts and colorful sweatbands. Everybody will notice them, see them coming, and Ali said they simply loved the T-shirts and sweatbands, they all felt like “soccer warriors,” he said.

They are steadily making the transition from their home countries, where they played soccer barefoot and in back yards, to their new home, where  soccer is a lavishly-funded upper middle class obsession. For these children, soccer if different, it means building their confidence, forming community, learning trust and acclimation. Ali has seen their growth since the team was formed. I’ve seen it in the much shorter time I’ve been around.

A band f brothers, good for them. They truly watch out for each other. Ali has taught them that, among other things.

It seems a long time ago that these kids were showing up at soccer games in flip-flops and shorts. I think they look fierce and confident and Ali, the biggest child of them all,  is delighted, he got a T-shirt also, it says “coach” on the back. I have rarely heard him so happy, he sent me this photo at their practice today and called me up to make sure I got it on my phone. I swelled up with pride a little bit also.

If Ali is my brother, these soccer players are now family. We watch over them.