Boys Represent Shrewsbury in Texas All-Star Football Game

While most kids were opening presents on Christmas morning, four boys from Shrewsbury headed to Texas to compete in a national football championship.

The boys—Zach Hastings, Austin Demers, Cameron Schaefer and Jake Lengel—are all fifth-graders at , except Zach who attends Veneri Academy in Worcester, and played on the U-11 team in the Offensive Defensive National Tournament in the Lonestar state.

Having won the state championship earlier in the month, but lost to New Hampshire in the quarter-finals with the local Shrewsbury American Youth Football & Cheerleading Organization's football team, Lengel, a student at Sherwood Middle School, said he and his teammates were sad.

"But my friend Cam said the season wasn't over—we were heading to Texas with the state all-star team," he said.

Lengel moves to France with his family at the end of the month, so he was proud to have finished the football season among friends with whom he has played the sport for the past four years on the Shrewsbury Patriots.

Of the game, Lengel, known as "the beast" by teammates, said it was a tough one to win.

"We played some kids who were huge—a few players were 100 pounds heavier than us," he said. "And some of the kids were older and out of our age bracket, which is why the one game we lost didn't count—it was considered an expedition game."

Despite the challenges, Lengel said the boys pulled together to take the championship.

"We had to step up our game and coach said all that mattered was heart," he said, who was named most valuable player of the game.