CHATHAM COUNTY, N.C. — In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Chatham 250 is sharing an exhibit with Chatham County students on the soccer team Los Jets.

Los Jets is the Jordan-Matthews High School boys soccer team that was started in 2002. Head coach Paul Cuadros began fighting for a boys soccer team in the 1990s, when the hispanic population in Chatham County started growing. 

"At that time, many of the kids had been born abroad, and this was a new experience for them," Cuadros said. "A lot of them felt alienated. It's a new place. They didn't understand it. They didn't know it. Many of them struggled with a language barrier, a cultural barrier."

He said the group was determined to prove they could succeed here and did. Los Jets made history in 2004 as the first predominantly Latino sports team to win a statewide championship in North Carolina. 

This is history Jazmin Mendoza Sosa, program director of community and schools at Chatham County, says they want the students to be proud of. 

Mendoza Sosa is traveling to the eight schools that will see the bilingual posters sharing the story of Los Jets. She says she was in school when the soccer team started and remembers what it meant to her community at the time — "working hard, dedication, staying strong, and overcoming barriers that seem very impossible at the beginning."

"But now, with different steps that we are taking in the community, it's becoming a possible thing," she said. 

At one of the first stops to Chatham Middle School, eighth-grader Aiden Hernandez said he saw his dad on the poster. His dad was one of the first boys to play on the team nearly 20 years ago.

"It makes me feel really proud," Hernandez said. "To know that he was a big deal, to bring community to Siler City, and to make other people feel comfortable and bring people together. That's just really cool to me, and I think it brings emotion to the game for me." 

The mobile exhibit will travel to Chatham Grove Elementary School, Silk Hope School, Bonlee School, Chatham Middle School, Siler City Elementary, Virginia Cross Elementary, North Chatham Elementary and Jordan-Matthews High School during Hispanic Heritage Month.