Bengal News West Reporters
It’s an overcast and muggy Saturday
morning at Front Park, quiet but for the sounds of sneakers squeaking on the
slick pavement of the parking lot as dozens of children play in the West Side International Soccer
program’s first-ever street soccer tournament.
In the middle of the parking lot
there is a tall statue of Commodore Oliver Perry, casting his gaze out toward
Lake Erie’s blue waters, visible just over the I-190. A few children sit at the
base of the statue waiting to be subbed into the action.
Most of these children come from refugee
families, immigrants from war-torn countries like Somalia, Burma, Iraq and Kenya.
Mateo Escobar, who runs West Side International Soccer with his fiancée, Amanda
Swallow, had told them not to wear cleats, but flats instead, shoes that are
designed for playing soccer on hard surfaces.
Swallow and Escobar, on the soccer program:
Swallow and Escobar, on the soccer program:
But not one of them brought street soccer-specific
shoes. A few are wearing cleats. Others are wearing beat-up Jordans or torn, low-top
Converses. One child’s tattered pair of black skater shoes peaks out from
beneath baggy and faded blue flannel pajamas.
Last session, Escobar and Swallow
purchased purple jerseys and tee shirts for the players. Next year they’ll have
a full uniform.
“A lot of these kids don’t have
proper dress,” Swallow said. “They come out to practice in the bitter cold
wearing tattered clothing, hand-me-downs that have already gone through ten
children. We try to do what we can to help with that.”
In addition to holding practice
sessions on Saturday afternoons, Escobar and Swallow also provide players with
nutritious meals and transportation to and from practice. Swallow picks up the
players herself in a large, beat-up black van, driving a route that takes her
all over the city.
They also take players on service
trips, volunteering at places like Friends of Night People and helping to rehab
run-down homes.
“There’s just so much more that we
want to provide,” Swallow said. “But sometimes it gets frustrating because we
just don’t have the means.”
For most other youth soccer clubs,
the majority of financial support comes from the parents paying their child’s
way. That is not the case with West Side International Soccer, which serves a
low-income population. Despite being financially strapped, Escobar and Swallow
have seen the program grow from 40 kids to more than 150 in just over a year,
since it started.
West Side International Soccer’s
all-volunteer staff relies almost entirely on donations from the
community—churches, schools and some other soccer programs have all pitched in.
“We want to provide them a safe
environment where they can come and have fun and build relationships with each
other,” Swallow said. “There are so many stresses just from being out on the
street. When they’re the only English-speakers in their family, there’s a lot
of pressure. Sometimes they’re raising themselves, and that gets them into
trouble.”
During the street soccer
tournament, one of the players—a thin, lanky 18-year old wearing worn grey
sneakers, with the laces tied around his ankles—constantly jaws at the referee
and trash-talks opponents.
Given the troubled backgrounds of
many of these players, Escobar and Swallow said behavior like this is not a
surprise. But this particular player has been with the program since the
beginning, and has recently shown improvement—he has even told Esobar and
Swallow that he wants to volunteer with WSIS and coach some of the younger
kids.
Late in a game, he gets tripped and
skins his knee on the pavement.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” he
said, holding his knee in disgust.
“OK then, don’t play,” the referee
said, and the player walks off the court. But he comes back a few seconds
later.
He wants to play.
