Jesuit High School just captured its record 18th Oregon state soccer championship with a 4-2 win over Grant — another trophy for a faith-based school that keeps producing winners while bureaucrats and activists work to sideline religious education.
Eighteen titles. No public school in the state comes close. That's not an accident. That's a culture built on something the establishment press won't name: faith.
The Oregonian covered the game straight — the scores, the stats, the highlights — but stripped the story of its most relevant context. Jesuit is a Catholic school run by the Society of Jesus. That's not a trivia detail. It's the reason the school exists, and it's the reason it keeps winning. The paper quoted star forward Vala Saghafi praising "the Jesuit community we have here" without once explaining what makes that community distinct. Saghafi, a Stanford-bound talent who already played for the USL League 2 Portland Bangers and the Timbers Academy, chose to finish his senior year at Jesuit rather than skip to elite competition. "Being here and competing with your friends that you go to school with every day — there's no better feeling than that," he told The Oregonian.
Saghafi scored twice in the final, capping a season with 38 goals and 20 assists and a career that lands him No. 4 on the state's all-time goals list and No. 2 for assists. Teammate Jet Perry was blunt: "He's truly the best player I've ever played with." Jesuit finished 16-1-1 after an opening tie and loss, with coach Geoff Skipper crediting captains Saghafi, Wesley Colling, and Dominic Bolouri for refusing to let the season slip: "They absolutely refused to lose after that point."
The other outlets in this weekend's championship coverage followed the same playbook — all sports, no faith. The Deseret News reported on San Juan winning its sixth straight 2A football title in Utah. The Denver Post covered Elizabeth, a public school in Colorado, chasing its first boys team title since 2010. Both are solid athletic stories. Neither touches the 18-title dynasty Jesuit has built.
The pattern is plain. Faith-based schools build communities of accountability and purpose that produce results — on the field and far beyond it. The establishment press covers the trophies and buries the reason they keep coming.
The question isn't why Jesuit keeps winning. It's why the people running education policy are so determined to make sure fewer families can choose schools like it.
