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‘Everybody Is Welcome Here’

Kaig Lightner founded the Portland Community Football Club to give local youth an inexpensive chance to play. When he came out as transgender, they gave him a place to belong.

Kaig Lightner, right, founded the Portland Community Football Club for area youth in 2013. “Soccer had been my main way of finding healing and connection, and I wanted that for these kids, too,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The soccer coach looked out at two dozen or so of his players and felt nervousness course through him like a rip current.