A youth soccer program in the Bahamas is transforming the lives of impoverished youths through soccer and developing them into a most unlikely team of champions. In just a few short years, the Youth Empowerment through Sports International (YESI) program has taken in the island’s most disadvantaged kids, taught them soccer and turned them into higher achieving academic students-athletes who are not only winning soccer games but winning titles.

 The team lost every game and never scored a single goal during its debut season, yet a year later the squad won the Bahamas Primary School national championship without surrendering a single goal during the three-day national tournament. Their transformation reaches another milestone this weekend when many of these kids will board an airplane for the first time and travel to the place Where Dreams Come True for the Disney Memorial Day Soccer Shootout. They are one of nearly 600 teams from the US, Mexico, Argentina, Jamaica, etc.