Via the Wall Street Journal, a look at how detained Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s former high school soccer team dedicates a contest to raising awareness—and bringing a beloved champion back home:

Had you hurried by, it would’ve looked like any other high school soccer game, one of thousands being played across the country on a gray Tuesday afternoon. Two teams running through warm-ups, primed for action. A gaggle of students and parents, packed into nearby bleachers. Gusts of chilly air, a signal of autumn’s arrival.

And yet this wasn’t an ordinary game being played at Princeton High, a public school in an Ivy League college town.

If you got closer, you’d have seen that the host team, the Tigers, were dressed in warm up T-shirts reading #IStandWithEvan. It was their tribute to a beloved alumni, Evan Gershkovich, class of 2010, a Wall Street Journal reporter currently approaching six months in a Russian prison, for doing nothing more than his job of chronicling the truth.

Friends at the Journal know Evan Gershkovich as an outstanding journalist and generous colleague, the very best of who we are. At Princeton High, especially on this rectangle of turf behind the Gothic main building, he remains Evan, No. 18, the wisecracking, scholastically-gifted, Arsenal soccer-crazed child of Soviet immigrants who was the captain and an essential member of a Tigers team that won a state championship in 2009.

“A gift from the soccer gods,” is how Evan’s former coach, Wayne Sutcliffe, described him to me.

Gershkovich was Princeton High’s center midfielder—an exhausting position with offensive and defensive obligations. Vocal and relentless, Evan became the engine of an overachieving squad. He was not the biggest or the fastest, but he excelled through persistence and vision. “He could see a pass before anybody else,” said one of Evan’s former teammates, Thatcher Foster.

“We used to call him ‘Slow Busquets,’” Foster said, a reference to the legendary Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets, now reunited with Lionel Messi with Miami. “He could not run. But he was the best passer in the entire state.”

As we talked, the current Tigers removed their Evan T-shirts for their game against rival Notre Dame High. Wayne Sutcliffe gave a brief speech, as did Foster, and Journal editor Ken Brown. In the bleachers, parents and alumni attached FREE EVAN buttons to jackets and sweatshirts. An Evan banner flapped in the wind, not the first at a soccer match – fellow Arsenal fans unveiled their own Evan tribute at a game last season.

I asked Foster what Evan would think of all the fuss.

“I think he would love it,” he said, “but I think he’d find a way to poke fun at it, too. He’d just have a big smile on his face about it all.”

To these Tigers, Evan is family. In the stands was Rachel Bozich, a classmate of Gershkovich’s back at Princeton for the first time since graduation. She took French with Evan (“He’s beyond smart,” she said) and carries happy memories of that championship season, packing into cars to cheer the Tigers at road games. “It’s one of the most magical things, when I think about high school,” she said.

That 2009 Princeton High team, thick with senior talent, but without a single standout player, barnstormed through the season undefeated. They weren’t big scorers—they won a lot of games 1-0—but the defense was a fortress. The Tigers gave up only 8 goals in 25 games, Sutcliffe said.

In pressurized moments, they turned to Evan.

“Never missed a penalty shot,” said Sutcliffe. “A hundred percent confident. We always picked him to be first [in a penalty shootout.]”

Sutcliffe, who retired from coaching the boys’ team this year after 26 seasons, estimated he’d spent close to 1,000 hours with Gershkovich over four varsity campaigns.

“He was a guy you could rely on,” he said. “He understood soccer on a higher level than most.”

Like everyone else who knew Evan, Sutcliffe was stunned by Gershkovich’s detainment on March 29, and Russia’s allegations of espionage. Evan, the Journal and the U.S. government have vehemently denied the accusations and demanded his immediate release. The U.S. has formally called Gershkovich “wrongfully detained.”

At the moment, Gershkovich is being held in Russia’s Lefortovo prison. Princeton High friends have seen the images of Evan in court appearances, looking poised, even smiling. They believe—and hope—the qualities they saw in their teammate will serve him in a difficult situation.

“He’s an incredibly resilient person,” said Foster. “Nothing fazed him. It’d be 20 degrees and Evan would be laughing with the whole team about a shot he’d kicked over the goal.”

“In situations where we would go down, Evan wouldn’t take it too hard,” said another 2009 teammate, Max Reid. “He’d always be like, ‘How are we going to come back?’”

Evan’s youth soccer coach, Alan Ehernworth, pulled an old team photograph of Evan from his pocket. He’d coached Evan from the age of 10.

He, too, was trying to stay hopeful.

“On the field, off the field, he was always able to solve problems,” he said. “He could get along with all types of people, and figure things out. That’s why we all think he’s going to figure this out.”

Down on the field, Princeton and Notre Dame High charged back and forth in a scoreless, physical game. In the lead-up, players from both schools had learned more about the circumstances behind Gershkovich’s detainment. Students at Princeton wrote Evan letters to be delivered to him in prison.

Ryan Walsh, Sutcliffe’s successor as head coach, told his players about Evan the soccer teammate—the captain who never backed down. He wanted the Tigers to embody Evan’s personality in the game. That would be the best way for them to pay tribute.

You wouldn’t call it a storybook ending, because there’s only one ending to this story that everyone wants. But late in the match, still 0-0, with the final seconds of regulation draining away, Princeton charged the net and knocked home the winner. The scorer was a senior named Matthew Kim.

His position? Center midfielder.

“He’s a rock,” Walsh said. “He makes this team go.”

The Tigers—and a throng of merry students running in from the bleachers—mobbed Kim on the turf. When we talked, he had a fresh cut on his chin from the celebration pile.

I asked Kim what he’d say to Evan Gershkovich, if he could speak to him.

“Evan, we’re thinking of you,” Kim said. “We’re hoping that you come home, and we’re ready to welcome you back.”

That is the goal. Because this wasn’t an ordinary game.