HoustonChronicle.com - Lopez: For many inner-city youths, soccer is more than a sport.

Gerardo Piña Jr. has beaten the odds. He has kicked and screamed his way across soccer fields virtually his entire life, chasing something most might take for granted.
And he is but one of a handful of first-generation, American-born soccer players on the inner-city Albion Hurricanes Football Club. All of them will become the first in their respective families to earn a college education.
They have overcome daunting obstacles of circumstance. More, they have prevailed over barriers they should not have had to face ? but did ? because the city of Houston has a problem.