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$1.23. That is the amount of money Jake had to his name when he touched ground back in New York. If the plane had landed on Ellis Island, the analogy would not be any better. Here is a man whose journey has taken him to the depths of loss, depression and solitude. He drove a cab on Long Island while he fought through withdrawal. He bounced from odd job to odder job to slightly less odd job until he found the one place that might accept such a disgraceful failure. Martin Luther King Jr. High School.

More than twenty years their senior, sure, but Jake was the honest reflection of the kids he found sitting across his counselor’s desk in the Special Education ESL (English as a Second Language) program. They were lost, confused, alone, and having a hard time with living. So was he. They were looking for something better. So was he. They could barely speak to each other, but as between the students, there was one way Jake knew he could communicate with them. Through soccer, he began to show the students, along with himself, that the dream of something better wasn’t just a quote hanging at the entrance of the school.

Before long, King Soccer was accepting championship trophies while the players were accepting diplomas and college scholarships. In a school where graduation rates hovered around 50 percent, the soccer team’s average was (and is) above 80 percent. The sign read “Playing soccer for Martin Luther King is about getting a better life.” Jake was making those words transubstantiate on the soccer field, whether his detractors wanted to accept it or his team’s records.

The Flip Side (Tails)

Losers. You could take the same story I’ve just told you and flip it 180 degrees. Martin Jacobson is a loser. The students of Martin Luther King Jr. High School are losers. That is all they know: drugs, crime, bankruptcy, violence, jail, homelessness, loss, loss, loss, loser, loser, loser. Who then would resort to cheating in order to win faster than Jake or MLK? Ask an opposing coach, such as Dan Rather did in a 60 Minutes interview from 1999, and you will get a strong answer: Nobody. Much like the yearly crowning of King Soccer as city champ, the cycle of allegations repeats annually.

The accusations almost pile as high as the trophies: illegal recruiting, ineligible players, playing kids on days they were absent from school, etc, etc. In his twenty years of coaching, Jake admits he’s made some mistakes. He was suspended once for playing an ineligible 20-year-old student (no one, including Jake, knew until two years later). In another case, Jake hunted down Nigerian documents in order to prove himself innocent. He’s been fired, then reinstated. During the “hiatus,” he watched his team celebrate the city championship from the stands, the King players chanting his name upon victory.

New York Times sports writer Robert Lipsyte, who covered the team for more than seven years, said in the 60 Minutes piece that he believed Jake is committed to winning fair and square, but admitted to some degree of slippage. “Slippage being that,” Lipsyte told Dan Rather, “I don’t think it’s so simple, considering where these kids have come from, to see if they are always as precisely eligible.”

And the recruiting? Lipsyte again sides with Jake, who explains it like this: “I don’t find the kids. They find me.” It’s an age-old high school sports story. Once a school succeeds at a sport, they become known for it, and players want to go there. We don’t recruit, we attract – is how the saying goes (at least that is how it went at the football factory where I went to high school). There are rules against recruiting players, but there is nothing illegal about kids and parents actively pursuing specific schools. Whether they have to move to a different neighborhood, pay for a private school, or in New York City’s case, simply apply to a specific school, there will always be people willing to expend effort in order to win. At King, parents are constantly contacting the coach. Jake says he averages a phone call a day. They read about him in the paper. Their kid plays soccer. Their kid is failing school. They beg Jake to take them, help them, make them men. And that’s just what he does.

Or did.

The times are changing for Jake and MLK, and opposing coaches are no doubt looking forward to these new times. Beginning in 2001, the city high school system began to restructure. MLK was broken into five different schools with five different principals. The ESL and special ed programs that Jake once counseled were absorbed into these five schools. Where he once wielded the power to essentially admit any student as long as there was room and easily track their classes, grades, and progress, Jake now sits in limbo in a windowless office, employed by none of the specific five schools, and without any of the administrative power that helped build the King Soccer dynasty.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Jake said. “I can’t save kids. I can tell them what they need to do. I can tell them to go to the placement office. Take your visa, your green card, your ID. Nothing Illegal. There is this huge process that as a counselor I used to be able to help expedite. Now they have to do it all on their own. And when you’re a foreigner, can’t speak English, they treat you like cattle, they treat you like shit. And nothing happens.” They lose. The team loses. And the competition wins. In two years, the last of Jake’s old MLK kids will be gone. He foresees a slow death where the team suffers along with the school’s growing pains. He is not sure he will stay around to see its last breath. This could be the end of the dynasty.

Living in the Moment

When you’re a poor kid, it is hard to look beyond the here and now. When you’re 60-something and your hepatitis is forever subtracting from your life, it is easier to live for today. Whatever lack of confidence there may be in not only fielding competitive teams but in the future of MLK High School, little more than Jake’s office has been affected at this point. The love and faith between the coach and his players is still strong, but his office is falling apart.

A mix of institutional interior decorating and dorm room ambiance washes over me with the clinical scent of bulk-ordered, stackable chairs. The walls are nearly blank except one, which is covered with the story of King Soccer. Plaques, newspaper clippings and proclamations from the mayor hang on the wall above a dresser covered in trophies of all sizes, some broken from being handled and moved so many times. Sitting on the floor is a large cardboard box filled with more plaques waiting to be hung in his new office, if he ever gets one. There are two gym lockers the coach uses as a safe. There is a ratty couch that supports the endless stream of students looking for advice and answers or simply someone to talk with who is not a teacher and not a parent, and thus not as intimidating. His senior soccer players make his office their home during their free period. During this daily hour, the dorm room vibe doubles thanks to the laughing, teasing, cursing, and all those things that create camaraderie and make this institution feel more like a boy’s home.

Conclude what you will about the soccer (winners or losers), this man and these kids stand for a hell of a lot more than some broken, plastic, piece of shit trophy.

Jake looks over the material reminders of his success that hang uneven on the wall. He doesn’t bother to straighten them, and I think that says a lot about this man. “I never set myself as a prophet,” he says. “But definitely, to these kids, I’m something. And these people, the system, they just don’t get it. So in two, three years, I’ll probably be gone. The kids that should be here, won’t, and everyone will forget about me. No more New York Times articles, no more ESPN documentaries, no more book deals or movie options. But they will remember King Soccer.”

To Be Continued…

Click here for the conclusion to ‘Kings of King’