Eastside Memorial, formerly known as Johnston High school, has been fielding a competitive playoff soccer team for the last three years. Despite playing against schools with three to four times our population, the boys have always put their heart on the field, playing attractive soccer, and winning.

Now that we're in 4A instead of 5A, we have a good chance of making state, but we need your help to get there. We field three teams at Eastside Memorial, and many of our students can not afford their own bags, sweats, or warm up gear. Our Freshman team, since I created it three years ago, relies on cotton T-shirts with numbers on them, and feel embarrassed by the fact that other schools have much nicer jerseys.

I want to change this for the players, who deserve to look as good as they play. They are a great group of students that come from the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Congo, and Sudan. They are hard workers at school and for our city, many of them work in our restaurants, help construct our buildings, or help keep clean our offices and groceries afterhours. Many of these students do not get home until midnight every weekday, after spending the entire day at school, practice, and then work.

I am their Varsity Coach, Joshua Zapata, and I have spent the past six years coaching at the high school level in East Austin. Soccer is really important to the students, and community of East Austin, so I feel honored to help coach these guys. They're really good, but they need your help in order to push our program to the next level; where it deserves to be.

What your donations will go toward:

*A new set of matching Jerseys and shorts.
*A set of matching bags, sweats, and warm ups.
*Food/snacks for our trips out of city (our district is now against teams far from Austin)
*Water bottles, and athletic tape.
*New balls