In Jairo Guevara’s new world, the weather is cooler, the forests are thicker and mountains clutter the horizon. He misses his family and friends, and has had to confront the anxiety of attending a new high school.
“But if I want to become a pro soccer player,” he said, “I have to do it.”
Guevara has lived almost all of his 15 3/4 years in the D.C. metro area and thrived in the Alexandria Soccer Association. But because he is fixated on a career in a sport he has been playing since he was a tot — and because he needed a pro environment to elevate his level — he moved cross-country this month and joined the Portland Timbers academy.