Tear-jerker

If you've got the time to read it all, this is a heartwarming story about a coach who didn't give up, and a church motivated to show love. It's worth it.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Somewhere between home and the football field, Christian Swain's driver's side window short-circuited. This had better not be an omen, he thought. He'd waited his whole life -- all 33 years -- to be a high school head football coach, and he didn't want his first season to be a clunker. He kept pressing the electric buttons inside his beat-up gold '99 Ford Taurus, but the window stayed stuck wide open. As he turned onto Interstate 5, the wind stung his face. Good thing it was summer.

He drove onto campus and parked next to a stadium with no stands. The school -- Roosevelt High in north Portland -- was a notorious bottom-feeder located in the poorest part of the city. It had no cheerleaders, no marching band, no press box and, as far as Swain could tell, no quarterbacks. But still three months away from opening night, the coach had reason to believe he could pull this off. He had grown up just east of campus, on the wrong side of the bridge himself, and he knew if these kids were anything like him -- hungry, a little nuts and searching for a better life -- he could win a game. Maybe even two.

When the school hired him last January as campus monitor -- i.e., to keep peace in the hallways -- Swain was curious to know why the team had just gone 0-9. At that time, he had just applied for the head-coaching job and was desperate to read the pulse of the school. From his career as an undersized middle linebacker at nearby Lincoln High in the mid-'90s, he remembered Roosevelt as having tough, reputable teams. Built in 1923, the school resembled an East Coast prep academy complete with a picturesque bell tower. He had always seen potential there. Little did he know the place was rotting from the inside out.

Continued...