Miami-Dade students serve as player escorts at World Cup quarterfinal

Twenty-two Miami-Dade County Public Schools students from Earlington Heights Elementary stepped into the World Cup spotlight Saturday night as official player escorts for the Norway-England quarterfinal at Miami Stadium. The northwest Miami-Dade children were selected through Miami SCORES, giving a public-school group from one neighborhood a direct role in one of soccer’s biggest stages.

Hours before kickoff, the students tried on their official adidas uniforms, waved Norway and England flags, and got a preview of the walk they would make onto the field. The match was played July 11 at 9 p.m. local time in Miami Stadium, where the quarterfinal put the students at the center of the pregame ceremony rather than in the stands.

Miami SCORES says the escort opportunity is part of its Quaker Player Escort Program during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and that 88 Miami poet-athletes are included in the local effort. The organization describes its after-school model as one that combines soccer, poetry and service-learning to support whole-child development, linking athletics with literacy and community service.

The Miami selection was announced May 12, and the local cohort was drawn from a much larger tournament-wide program. Quaker, working with Common Goal, identified more than 1,400 youth across all 11 FIFA World Cup host cities for player escort roles, putting the Earlington Heights students inside a broader network of youth engagement built around the tournament.

For Miami-Dade schools, the moment turned a global event into a local one. It gave students from a Title I elementary school in northwest Miami-Dade a chance to see how major sports events can reach beyond ticketed spectators and into classrooms, after-school programs and community partnerships. In a county that has spent the year absorbing World Cup attention, the Earlington Heights students were not just watching the spectacle. They helped present it.