In Bowling Green, Kentucky, the state's "international city", over 1,200 Congolese immigrants have arrived in the past six years, primarily via Tanzania. Linguistic and cultural changes can present challenges for some immigrants, but Daniel Tarnagda, the founder of refugee aid organization Refuge Bowling Green, saw soccer as a universal language for fellow refugees who came to the city, establishing teams as youth expressed interest. Within the past decade, soccer teams throughout Bowling Green for--and by--refugees have experienced rapid growth.

The Refuge soccer team, this project's subject, is made entirely up of refugee students who carried their skills, organization, and pride throughout a string of victories in the season. This piece aims to show how soccer ties together the lives and aspirations of refugee youth in Bowling Green through the uniting power of soccer clubs.

In it, two natural subjects emerged--Bukuru and Toyi Lubunga, twin brothers with dreams of being soccer stars first and a nurse and lawyer second. This project is not exclusively about them, but their everyday lives are shown to elucidate the threads running between soccer and the larger community around them.