On September 11 the soccer teams from Roosevelt and Amundsen high schools faced off in a rematch of last year’s Public League championship. They wore last year’s uniforms and played on a muddy field without bleachers, bands, or cheerleaders, while a couple of cops periodically warned both coaches and the referees to move their cars from nearby Foster Avenue lest they be towed.
That’s putting it mildly–at least a lot more mildly than soccer referee Kenneth Newman puts it. As he sees it, organized soccer is to low-income Hispanic kids what basketball is to poor black kids: a reason to stay in school.
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“It’s a tragedy, especially for the Hispanic kids,” says Newman, who referees high school and semiprofessional soccer games. “They love soccer; it’s their favorite game. They should be playing for their school. It gives kids something to do; it keeps them out of gangs and off of drugs. The coach may be like a second father to a kid who doesn’t have a father. If the kids are good, they can get college scholarships. Or it just may be what a marginal student needs to stay in school.”
“Sports programs are not being singled out for cuts,” says a central-office spokeswoman. “But the learning that takes place in a classroom between teacher and student is sacrosanct and is our utmost priority. The fiscal reality sometimes precludes other extracurricular programs.”
Daminedes’s team is a bit unusual in that it includes girls. “I ask all interested girls to come out and join the team because it’s a great game for them to play,” says Daminedes. “They have teams for girls in the suburbs; why shouldn’t city girls get their chance? At one point in the 80s we had about eight girls on the team. But now we’re down to one; it’s kind of lonely for her.”
“There’s no question that the kids would respond to soccer here. But you can’t argue for soccer when you don’t have enough money to buy paper. Right now we have teachers paying out of their own pocket to buy paper for the Xerox machines. I suppose we should be thankful that we have a Xerox machine. Some schools are still using the old-fashioned ditto machines, assuming that they can get the parts to fix them when they’re broken.”
“The transfer didn’t have anything to do with soccer,” says Newman. “Teachers get bumped around the system all the time for a lot of different reasons. No one gives a damn about the consequences of these transfers. It’s all done by seniority or union rules. In this case, here’s a guy who put his special skills to use, and they’re wasting him. It doesn’t make sense.
