The Cost of Winning
In 2018, a nearly 200-year-old Catholic school in the heart of a neighborhood rife with gun violence and grinding socioeconomic challenges became a source of immense pride and then searing controversy when the school's football team, the Panthers, was expelled from their private school league for being "too good" – a development that raised questions of racial bias. Without a league to play in, the team devised its own schedule, traveling the country in search of top competition and opportunities to showcase its players as they competed for athletic scholarships.