Farewell

Rick Maese: The secret was already weighing on him as the team bus pulled out of Washington and headed north.

Tal Bayer, coach of one of the District's most unlikely athletic success stories, sat at the front, his pale bald head a beacon to his roster of two dozen teenagers. He called them his boys, and the physical expression of their relationship — cleats, gym bags, rugby balls — were strewn all over the bus.

Bayer liked taking his rugby players out of the city, where so many of their lives are defined by struggle. "Every mile you get away from D.C., away from school, from the pressures of home, you can see the kids open up," he said.

It was early March, and the Pride rugby team was headed…