Growing up, little kids want to be astronauts, firemen, presidents and many other extraordinary things, but that wasn’t the case for a group of boys who were on Mark Calvert’s soccer team. Chances are, they dreamed of playing soccer, morning, noon and night. And for seven seniors, that’s what they’ve done.

  Seniors Aaron Froehlich, Hunter Short, Nate Kramme, Logan Houf, Gage Scurlock, and Brendan Cunningham all started out on the same Rolla Knights soccer team when they were eight and nine years old. They played for Mark Calvert, a local attorney and father of a former bulldog. Austin Parks joined the team later. At the same time, Parks, Cunningham, Scurlock and seniors Nathan Parker, Aiden Gelles, and Caleb Homan played on another Rolla Knights team coached by Sundyha Gelles (and later Mark Calvert). For him, they won countless games, countless tournaments, travelled countless miles. And that was only their beginning. Two weeks ago, they finished their high school soccer career after playing all of those years together.

  The original team played in leagues in Saint Louis, Columbia and Springfield. They played in tournaments in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. They won games. They lost a few, too. All of this was in the name of soccer and in the name of getting better.

  Calvert always had his eyes on a different prize. He didn’t want his team to get better for today, or even tomorrow. He wanted them to get better so that they could be the best when it really mattered: high school. But before they got better, they had to get through their first years as a team.

  When the team first started, they didn’t have an actual soccer field to practice on consistently. They had flat parks to play on and even 2013 graduate Michael Janke’s backyard (that they cleared off) for a time, but nothing close to the lush green field they have now. The team bounced around from Coventry Park, to behind Green Tree Church, to a park behind the movie theater, to finally, the fields of Ralph Haslag, which later became the Knight’s soccer field. The field is about six miles north of downtown Rolla. Once the team moved to Haslag’s field, there was work to be done. Calvert, along with other parents and players had to prep the field before practices. They had to mow, and at times, they had to shovel cow manure out of their way until the players had a clean place to practice on.

  From there, the team began to practice for two hours a day, twice a week. This practice led them to start playing games on Saturdays, whole weekend tournaments. The team started hanging out together at the hotel’s pool. They all ate dinner together, not because that’s something that the players and their families had to do, it was just something that they did. After spending all of that time together, the players started getting better. They started to win games as they got older, and over the next few years, things changed.

  To keep them challenged, Calvert moved them to a different league with different teams and different tournaments. They upped their practicing time to three times a week rather than two times. Again, the boys hung out together poolside and at dinner. Their bonds grew stronger. Now that they were a little bit older, they understood more of the game. They played better and stronger. The boys started to not only play for themselves, but for each other. They started to win and win a lot. They switched leagues again the following year and had the same results. While they didn’t win every game, the team won a majority of their league and tournament games. To the Knights, games in Missouri were a war already won. Sure, they lost a few battles, but overall they came out on top. So the next year, Calvert set his eyes on a bigger prize: the President’s Cup — a national tournament.

  To get to the President’s Cup, the team had to do several things. First they had to win the championship for the state. Next they had to beat three teams in the Regional Cup championship in Wisconsin. After winning that, they would then proceed to the President’s Cup National tournament in North Carolina to play against three other teams from around the country to see who is the best of the best, but in order to even get there, they first had to pay for it.

  The team fundraised and fundraised until they couldn’t anymore. They did three car washes, they bagged groceries for tips at Country Mart. They sold pulled pork at the hospital and at Wal-Mart, they had a team garage sale at the United Methodist Church. They asked for donations and sold tee shirts with sponsorships on them. All in all, they raised over 10,000 dollars for their trip to North Carolina for the national tournament — which paid for the tournament entry fee and the hotel rooms for all of the families. At the President’s Cup Championship, the Rolla Knights played three teams. They were from Los Angeles, CA, Dallas, TX, and Harrisburg, PA. In their games against Harrisburg, the team lost a game and tied a game. They lost their games against the teams from Dallas and Los Angeles, too, but they played really well for being just a little team from Rolla, MO against these teams from cities tens or hundreds of times bigger than Rolla. Calvert still calls the President’s Cup a success, even though the team didn’t win, just the fact that they made it to the President’s Cup is good enough.

     Fast forward a year or two later. Half of the team is now freshmen in high school. Five of the Knights players who aren’t freshmen leave the team to play for the Saint Louis Scott Gallagher team. From there, Parker, Gelles, Homan and others come up from their team to play for Calvert’s Knights.

   Fast forward another year and they’re all playing on the high school team together.

   Fast forward two years, and they’re all playing on the same team for the first time in four years. Their record was 24-5. They went to quarterfinals of the state championship, falling to Carthage.

   Fast forward to this year. Scurlock, Kramme, Froehlich, Short, Houf, Parks, Gelles, Cunningham, Homan and Parker are all on the same varsity soccer team, playing their last season together.

   With as many records this team has made and broken, the final season for these former Knights can’t be called anything but a success. From playing in cow pastures, to bagging groceries, from the first field to the last field, this team has grown up to be more than just a team. They’re brothers.