Over the past couple of months Matt has been working with some of the local boys in a soccer program. 2-3 days a week, immediately after school, about 15 boys turn out to practice with Matt and a couple of other volunteer coaches. The 9-11 year old boys have been divided up into 3 teams, each with their own coach. On Mondays and Wednesdays we warm-up with laps, stretch and then run drills and do sprints. On Fridays we scrimmage one team against the next in a mini round-robin tournament.
Most of the boys play in bare feet, whether on the basketball court or on the playfield. Occasionally we can practice on the playfield, in between the trucks and workmen coming and going. For goals we put large rocks on the ground the appropriate distance apart, if a ball flies up into the air it is usually considered a no-goal if it is above the level of the goalie’s knees. We are currently raising funds locally to try to get enough money together to construct actual goal posts of PVC or metal.
In order to make this opportunity happen for the boys we needed to get soccer balls, ball bags, some small orange cones and coaches’ whistles. All of these things were made possible with the help of Julie’s family back in the Chicago area. With the generous support of Tom, Tami and Tim we were able to bring back with us last summer 33 soccer balls, 6 ball nets, 3 pairs of goalie gloves and a dozen orange cones. Back up in Minnesota, JACOM recently had a couple of hundred youth soccer jerseys donated to their organization and earmarked for Jamaica. They were able to send down enough jerseys, in enough different colors to allow the teams to all have their own color. Our plan is to have a couple of official tournaments with the boys on the actual Parade Ground/playfield once the revitalization project is complete, hopefully this spring. For now we primarily use the outdoor, concrete basketball court as our practice and scrimmage area.
Julie’s father, Tom, made a guest appearance a couple of weeks ago during a couple of our practices. He enjoyed hamming it up for the boys, and they enjoyed trying to get the ball past the stout, white goalie. There are few extra-curricular activities of any sort available to the students here in our rural community. This is one of the reasons that Matt wanted to develop this program… to give the boys something healthy and productive to do with their time after school. As expected, one of the biggest challenges lies in finding coaches who are willing to volunteer their time and show up reliably when practices are scheduled. The boys will always come.
With all the serious and detailed projects that we work on here during our Peace Corps service, this soccer program has turned out to be a pleasant and mostly relaxing break for Matt, one where he can run, and kick, and play, and forget about all the other extraneous stresses that are affecting him.
