In football, coaches will tell you, there are many ways to measure success. There are the statistics, of course, numbers neat and clean. But when lined up on a sheet of paper, numbers can often obscure a season more than capture it. They don’t measure the obstacles, how far the team came, how far behind it started. They don’t cover any of that, none of that at all.
For some teams, success is about never falling. For others it is about always getting back up. When Messmer, a predominately black Milwaukee high school, and Shorewood, a white suburban high school, decided to field a joint football team, it tested more than just the players’ football prowess. This is the story of that season of dreams.
