Cleats (comic strip)

Cleats is a 2001-2010 comic strip by Bill Hinds.
Premise.
"Cleats" features a group of young kids, coaches, and their parents as they deal with the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being on a soccer team. There are storylines that have the kids engaged in physical sports other than soccer or their lives outside of the field. There are two different soccer teams: The Dawgs (a rec team for boys lead by the ambitious and overconfident, Jack Dooley) and the Panthers (a select team for girls led by the tough and competitive, Abby Harper).
Publication history.
"Cleats" was carried in over 75 newspapers. The last iteration of "Cleats" ran on 31 October 2010, in the form of a special Halloween 'exit' strip. The October 31, 2010, strip showed Peri, Mondo, Abby, Jack, Edith, Jerome, Bailey, and Dee as ghosts playing soccer in the Comic Strip Graveyard. Abby has her giant ponytail back. Jack asks a trick-or-treater in a Spider-Man costume for help in getting back the soccer ball, which has fallen outside the cemetery wall. Bill Hinds stated that he had ceased producing "Cleats" because the strip "had suffered in many newspaper comic polls over the past nine years."
GoComics began, on December 2010, to show reruns. These go back to November 26, 2001.
In many newspapers, editors have chosen to run the earliest "Cleats" strips again, allowing readers to compare Hinds' initial style and characters against their more recent development. This has resulted in previous Sunday strips appearing on weekdays, but has opened to broad examination the processes by which a professional cartoonist evolves his work over years of production.
Special guests.
Fictional characters who have made special guest appearances in the strip include:
Books.
A compilation of "Cleats" comics named "Who Tracked Soccer Through the House ?: A Cleats Collection" was published in March, 2004 by Andrews McMeel Publishing. There are currently no plans for future compilations.
References.
 