His face told the whole story. A passionate mix of joy, relief, and excitement was all that was left when the burden was finally removed.

Jayelen Gray was cancer free.

After fighting a rare form of soft tissue cancer for the better part of three years, the senior Vandegrift linebacker announced the disease had subsided this July and he would be attacking his final year on the field with extra vigor.

Steve Asmussen has watched a replay of the Belmont Stakes more than 50 times since his horse, Creator, used a furious surge on the final straightaway to win almost two weeks ago.

It was the third Triple Crown race and fourth American Classic race the United graduate has won in his 30-year training career.

“It’s not only rewarding but extremely exciting in the way in which he did it,” Steve said. “He was coming off a disappointing race in the Kentucky Derby, so for the Belmont to unfold the way it did was extra exciting.”

For 11 years, scorching Laredo summers have been filled with drums and scarves and fans changing in unison while watching red and black jerseys run up and down the field. But next summer, that will all be silenced.

The Laredo Heat, coming off the first full season in which it didn’t make the playoffs, will not field a senior team for the 2016 Premier Development League season. All other aspects of the club including the youth player development, which includes more than 300 players in Laredo and surrounding areas, will not be affected and the club plans to field a senior team again in 2017.

“We’ve been promised for the last three years that (the PDL is) going to do something about our division to make it more competitive and more fan-friendly with more teams coming in and we see it going in the opposite direction,” Heat owner and president Shashi Vaswani said. “If we don’t take a stand, I think it will just keep doing that.”

For one week each year, Martin Sanchez has a different name.

The final week of the football season when bitter rivals Nixon and Martin face off, everybody in the Mustang locker room and on campus simply calls Sanchez “Nixon,” as they don’t want to utter the name of that other school.

It’s one of the seemingly thousands of ways the 1984 Nixon graduate puts a smile on everybody’s face that he comes in contact with on a daily basis.

“Martin is the epitome of a diehard Nixon Mustang,” assistant LISD Athletic Director and former Nixon girls basketball coach Arleen Averill said. “Coaches that he knows have taken him gifts that are a Martin (High School) cap or jacket. They say ‘Here’s a gift for you and it has your name on it.’ He won’t wear anything that’s not green and gold.”

For 45 minutes in late December, head coach Pete Solis and the Nixon basketball team had a talk.

After a game in which the Mustangs squandered a halftime lead at home against a ranked team, the conversation focused on coming together as one and living up to the mantra that’s on their jerseys, t-shirts, gym bags and Twitter account: Brotherhood.

“We talked from the heart, and when you do that everybody is going to listen,” Solis said. “Sometimes as a coach, you want to know the best motivational speech, but that night I just talked from the heart. That talk was the difference in the season.”

Ten players, six decades, two Hobey Baker Awards, one National Championship and countless memories.

No family has been so intertwined with a sport at MSU as the Miller family has with Spartan hockey.

“It’s a strong legacy that started back in the ’50s,” Kevin Miller said. “My uncle came in the ’50s, and then my cousin and my dad and we just kept following. We all grew up here and watched all the hockey games and wanted to be Michigan State Spartans. That was a big goal of ours and that’s why we worked so hard.”

From Batman and Robin to Bert and Ernie to Frodo and Sam, duos have always been an important part of American life - the same can be said about American soccer.

Omar Gonzalez and Matt Besler are turning into the dynamic duo in the center of the backline of the U.S. Men’s National Team.

The pair has started five games at center back, and the MNT is 3-0-2 in those games, including three shutouts with the most recent being a 2-0 win against Panama in Seattle on Tuesday.

“Before every game, we always give each other a few things to work on and make sure we do right,” Gonzalez said. “With each game, you need to say less and less just because you know what to expect from each other. The chemistry is definitely building, and hopefully, we can put out some more shutouts because that’s what we’re on the field for.”

The Chinese Zodiac calendar might say it’s the year of the snake, but in the world of soccer, it’s the year of the upset.

Relegated Wigan of the English Premier League upset powerhouse Manchester City in the FA Cup, Athletico Madrid beat cross-town rivals Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey, and Lazio denied Roma their 10th Coppa Italia title.

In the 100th edition of the U.S. Open Cup, four amateur teams pulled upsets of their own to make it to the third round against teams from Major League Soccer, tying the tournament record.

A year ago, Eric Wynalda, a former U.S. Men’s National Team player, and Cal FC of the United States Adult Soccer Association made a run to the fourth round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

Now, another team from the USASA, led by another former U.S. international player, hopes to make the same kind of deep run.

New Jersey-based Icon FC defeated the Brooklyn Italians 4-1 for the club’s first win in the U.S. Open Cup.