Tackling Misperception

Eli Saslow: The coaches had spent the previous two weeks teaching their players how to handle this moment -- how to cover their ears, or close their eyes, or pretend they were back on an empty field in Monterrey, Mexico -- but now that advice had been overwhelmed by a sensory overload. Thirty-nine kids from a private school in the Nuevo Leon province had spent four hours riding across the desert on a bus without air conditioning, blue shades pulled tight over the windows to block out the sun. The kids raised the curtains, looked through the glass and found themselves here.

The concrete grandstands of 14,000-seat Memorial Stadium had filled with fans banging yellow ThunderStix. A 125-piece band played the McAllen High School fight song while girls twirled flags to the beat. Twenty cheerleaders clapped and tumbled across the FieldTurf, which had been installed for $725,000 only a few months earlier. Hundreds of face-painted McAllen students locked arms in the bleachers and rocked from side to side, so that the stadium appeared to shake with them.

Players for the Prepa Tec Borregos, the best high school football team in Mexico, walked across the field 15 minutes before kickoff and marveled at what they called "un gran palacio," a great palace. The Borregos played their home games in front of fewer than 100 fans on converted soccer fields, and their classmates sometimes confused football with rugby. The players and coaches had crossed the border seeking to validate themselves -- to legitimize Mexican football -- by challenging one of the biggest high schools in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.

Borregos Coach Roberto Rodríguez dropped his clipboard on the visitors' sideline and kneeled. He asked his players to gather around and lock eyes with him, so they couldn't look into the stands. Many of them had played in Texas before with Prepa Tec, but Rodríguez had nonetheless prepared them for what he considered a dual foe: the McAllen team, and the pandemonium that surrounded it.

"You must ignore these distractions," the coach told his players in Spanish. "We have a job to do here. You must forget the fans. Forget the stadium. Forget all of Texas. We came here to ..."

BOOM.

Rodríguez's speech was interrupted by what sounded like a cannon's blast, and his entire team whipped around to look back at the field. The Borregos turned just in time to see 70 McAllen football players sprinting through the mouth of a giant, inflatable bulldog. They emerged through a cloud of dry ice and entered Memorial Stadium to a standing ovation.

Arturo Abrego, Prepa Tec's 18-year-old defensive captain, turned back to face his teammates.

"Esto está loco," he said.