PROVIDENCE -- As sophomores they won the 2006 state championship, celebrating a 2-1 victory over upstart Mt. Hope on co-captain Winston Smith's header in the last minute of regulation. They were the first inner-city team in two decades to win the Rhode Island title.

As juniors last year, they made the playoffs again but lost to Portsmouth, 4-1, in the quarterfinals.

As seniors this fall, they are leading a team of talented but inexperienced freshmen and sophomores in their quest for a third consecutive playoff appearance. With a 2-4-3 record, they will have to start winning in a hurry to reach that goal.

But Juan J. Velez and Matthew Wento, two of the three captains of the Hope High School soccer team, have learned that while winning is great, coming together for the benefit of the team is more important. And at Hope, coming together means a lot more than practicing and playing together. It means first learning to understand each other, literally and figuratively.

"The language barrier is big," said Velez, a senior and veteran goalkeeper.

Unlike private schools where students come from around the state, Hope's student body comes from around the world: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Colombia, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cape Verde, Bolivia and Honduras. Immigrants themselves, or the children of immigrants -- from those nations and others -- they stroll from class to class in the three academies housed in the red brick monolith on the East Side, and run on the green fields out back.

"In 2006 we were known as the United Nations team," Velez said with a smile.

The same is true in 2008. They have been together for more than a month, but Monday afternoon, during a 1-1 tie with Mount St. Charles, chatter among Hope players sounded at times like a U.N. conference.

Velez, who spent part of his childhood in Colombia, said that the first couple of days of preseason practice last month had nothing to do with soccer and everything to do with diversity. They played games to help them remember each other's names, and anyone who forgot a name had to do pushups. They also worked at learning accents.

"In the beginning I couldn't understand a word Joe was saying," Velez said, pointing to sophomore Joe Dunoh, from Liberia. "Now he's my friend."

"I couldn't understand anybody's accent. Now we're joking around," added Marcelo Lopez, a junior and the third captain of the Blue Wave.

Velez, a tall, strong, confident young man with wiry hair tied in a ponytail, is clearly a leader on this team. Patrolling his turf in front of the net, he seems to dare opposing strikers to beat him. He held the Mounties at bay until Jake SanAntonio caught the right corner with a grass-cutting shot from the left.

Velez, whose idol is the great Italian keeper Luigi Buffon, directs traffic, shouts encouragement and admonishes gently. He praised sophomore Godwin Nyanti, a speedy forward, after his first-half goal Monday, and he kept pushing sophomore Joshua Gonzalez.

"Josh, you can't take your time like that," he said after Gonzalez lost the ball, his fancy footwork gone awry.

"Josh, you can't let him get behind you," he cried in the second half, when a Mountie ran by Gonzalez.

Velez wasn't always so vocal.

"He was quiet last year," coach Alfonso "Al" DiGregorio said. "I told him he has to be more vocal and assertive this year."

"It's different," Velez said, "because we have a lot of freshmen and sophomores who are new to the school, and they're thinking high school, high school, not sports. It's big to get them to practice on time and get them to games on time."

An honor roll student at Hope's Leadership Academy, Velez is interested in Boston University and Providence College.

Wento, a Liberian who moved to Sierra Leone before coming to the United States, has played soccer since he was 3, and it shows. He is not big, but as a sweeper and forward, he is a take-charge player. In the first half against the Mounties, he was immense on the back line. After the Mount tied the game, he moved up and almost won it. With three minutes to play he launched a rocket that goalie Eric Mozynski somehow caught. A minute later, Wento blasted another shot off the side of the net.

"My freshman year was pretty hard. I didn't know what to say on the field. Sophomore year was better. Now I need to step it up because a lot of kids don't have much experience," he said.

Wento is looking at American International College in Springfield, Mass.

Lopez is learning leadership skills from Velez and Wento, just as they did from Smith -- who is playing for Roger Williams University now -- and as Smith did from the captains who preceded him. Lopez already appreciates the opportunity to play with players who learned the game on streets and dusty lots abroad instead of at soccer camps in the United States, to learn of their cultures and to try to understand their languages. And he is sharing his Guatemalan and Portuguese heritage with them.

If Hope High School is the United Nations of soccer in Rhode Island, then DiGregorio is the secretary general. A short, stocky man with a quiet demeanor, he arrived here from Italy in 1969, when he was 14, without knowing a word of English. Ten months later, in October 1970, he enrolled at Hope. He graduated in 1973 and went on to Rhode Island College.

"I use myself as an example for these kids. I lived it. I know what they're going through on a daily basis," he said. "When I was here, we had Jewish kids from the East Side, Italian kids from Charles Street and black kids from the Mount Hope neighborhood. There were a lot of Portuguese kids from Fox Point. We learned to get along. I watch these kids coming in today and their parents coming in, and it makes me think of the old days. The parents wanted to help but didn't know how. They'd say, 'You're the teacher, do what you have to do.' Parents today want to help but don't know how, and say the same thing: 'You're the teacher; do what you have to do.' "

DiGregorio helped organize a club soccer program at Hope while he was a student at RIC. After two years, it became a varsity sport and took off. He became assistant coach in 1980 and head coach in 1988, and said "I'll be here as long as I can walk."

But times have changed in 35 years. DiGregorio makes sure his players have something to eat before night games and often brings sandwich materials from home. He makes sure they have a ride after games and insists that they call him when they get home.

All he asks in return is an invitation to their college graduation, so he can congratulate them. In James Quiah's case, that could be next spring. A civil engineering major at the University of Rhode Island, Quiah scored 67 goals during his Hope High career and was a two-time All-State player. He also was a record-setting relay runner for coach Thom Spann's track team.

"He didn't know his father, so he used to call me dad," DiGregorio said. "Last summer, he was working in Providence and called and said, 'Hey, dad. You want to meet me for lunch?' "

The veteran coach, who has touched the lives of so many of the children who remind him of his own youth, paused.

"That's the greatest pleasure for me in all this," he said.