We all knew that some players had more money than others by the type of cars their parents drove. We all marveled at the occasional Mercedes, but at the next practice that person was treated no differently than the rest. The team was concerned with winning not looks.
Johnathan was one of the players that I became good friends with. His mother worked for the same oil company as my mother and they new each other well. Johnathan, I, and a few other teammates would sometimes sleep over at each other's houses on the weekends. I remember some houses were not quite as large and extravagant as the others. We sometimes stayed with Whites and sometimes Hispanics. There were very little similarities between all of us except that we were the better players on the team. Unlike the school yard anyone could be on the team as long as your parents paid, and after practice it was noticeable the more athletic players hung out together. No one ever questioned why they were not invited to sleepovers because they already understood the difference. Not good not invited. In middle school you played for the school's football team and there was no need for a little league for that age group. Since Johnathan and I were from different neighborhoods we would not play together during middle school, but I figure one day I play against him in high school.
In Middle school, teenagers started noticing the other sex quite a bit more. It was not uncommon to see a group of girls at a football game. They began to enjoy the sport and showed more and more support for the team as the season went on. Athletes became very popular in school and generally had the prettiest girls. We all had a strong sense of our own culture and who we were, but there were always various interracial couples at one time. We grew up around other cultures and embraced them making it impossible to have a problem dating others. Black guys could always be seen with Hispanic girls and whites guys seemed to flock to black girls.