The Rockaways took probably the heaviest beating from Hurricane Sandy out of any of the other Northeast regions. Two weeks later, thousands still remain without power and schools have been shuttled to shelters and emergency staging areas, with only 15% of the student population able to make it to these locations.

That didn’t stop Beach Channel Campus from competing in their playoff football game. BC Dolphins’ Coach Victor Nazari put together a team of 25 players to compete against the favored Port Richmond Raiders, despite the entire team not having seen each other for almost a month.

The speech Nazari gives the team before they go out onto the field is beautiful, heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

They didn’t win, with a final score of 38-6 Richmond, but based off the subsequent speech that Senior Captain Justin Zemser delivered after the loss, they still won in their hearts.

via buzzfeed