Roatán, Honduras (Part 2)
With barely any time to spare, it was off to our third session of the day with Kairos. As Josh and I waited by his car, a hand tapped my back shoulder and caught me by surprise. Behind the hand, I saw a familiar smile. It was a boy named Elsen, one who had been there since our first ever collaboration with Kairos in 2017. He had even participated in our virtual challenge series during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic!
Now 18 years old, I met him when he was playing with their youth team and he has since worked his way up the first team in the present day. He’d grown taller, but was still long and lanky like he was back in the day. I knew he had been working at the airport and was hoping to see him when I flew in Saturday, but did end up seeing him while on his break right before my flight leaving the country.
Elsen greeted me warmly and we exchanged a few words before he retreated to the field for the start of practice. We trailed shortly behind, carrying over all the important equipment needed for training. One by one, players entered the fold, holding the new soccer boots we gave them by their side. We had hooked them up with some good stuff too! Nike tiempos, mercurial vapors, Adidas predators, and more.
We had about eight players in attendance. It’s always tough to get big numbers since they get caught up with work sometimes, but soccer still remains a very important part of their lives and keeps them on the right path. The practice started with 15 minutes of activation, jogging around the field. At one point, while setting up grids, I saw something moving in the grass in the distance and realized it was a crab. He was pretty lost! The players seemed to have seen el cangrejo at the same time and slowed their jog to take a closer look themselves.
“Hey!” yelled Josh. “This crab is running faster than you guys!”
I busted out laughing, as did a few of the guys.
After, the team’s captain led them through some light stretching before we headed over to a square grid for the first drill. Josh had set up a ronda for a 4v3, 3v1 possession activity.
Before jumping into it, Josh got everyone’s attention and called me over to his side.
“Listen team, today we have a visitor – Stephen. He has been a friend of Kairos since 2017, and he’s the reason why many of you are wearing the cleats you’re wearing and the reason we have soccer balls to use during today’s training,” he added.
Josh had just two soccer balls to use for his entire team prior to today.
“Some people say he looks like Mats Hummels, but either way let’s give him a big round of applause,” added Joshua.
I graciously put my hand over my chest and thanked the team for welcoming me, not just today but throughout the years. We had given them New Balance gear, soccer balls, and more in the past, and I was overjoyed to see the squad still using the same NB soccer ball bag I gave them over two years prior. This time, we had accompanied the new pairs of cleats with some goalkeeper gloves and nearly a dozen soccer balls. After introductions were done, we got straight into the drill, immediately following it up with a one-touch passing grid. We were doing push passes followed by a give-and-go, players constantly moving and following their own pass to the next position.
From there, we dropped into an attacking drill to help the wingers who were in attendance. Balls were sprayed out wide and then crossed back into the center. Our goalkeeper wasn’t in attendance so I deployed myself back there, but Josh warned that unlike Adele they would not be going easy on me at all. Throughout all three drills I just laid low “taking class”, basically taking notes of the whole session, noting a few key takeaways and possible drills to implement in our future programs albeit with younger participants.
Later, over dinner, I told Joshua how cool it was to see him in his element, coaching the older guys. Obviously we had shared the sideline before, but we were working with Kairos’s “intermedia” team, and this was the real deal now with los mayores.
“Bro, just to see you out there doing your thing… it was special,” I told him over some Bojangles.
I met Joshua when he was 18 years old, the same age as Elsen now. Back then, we all played soccer together on the other side of the game, as players rather than coaches. To see him first hand doing something that he truly enjoyed doing, something he found great meaning in was cool. It was special, and I was glad to just be a small part of it. “A fly on the wall of his locker room” one could say.
Practice wrapped up near two hours later with a light rain falling at the end of our crossing drill. The boys were playing our rescheduled game from the weekend against Corozal on Sunday, so I wished them good luck and apologized that I wouldn’t be able to attend. They thanked me again for the cleats, while some players promised to score many, many goals in their brand new wheels. One player even scored two goals in his next game that Sunday!
Afterwards, Josh and I got in the car with a few players, dropping them off at their homes before grabbing dinner. As we were leaving the field, I saw a blue ball bouncing under the faint light of an outdoor bulb. Under it, a young boy in a matching blue shirt was practicing his skills into the late hours of the night.
I looked closer and realized I recognized the ball, a blue Sondico one with white accents. I squinted and realized that the ball’s owner was just as familiar.
“Cris!” I yelled out, from Josh’s car window. He was my captain from our session with Victoria Insular’s U13 squad.
The boy followed the sound of my voice and left through the entrance door to his house to the side of the car.
“Hey Profi!” he said after an initial wave of surprise, out of breath from his practicing.
I extended my arm for a fist bump and told him to enjoy the new ball and to keep working hard and practicing. Later, as we dropped off a player in ‘Spanish Town’, our car revving its engine strongly to will its way up the neighborhood’s steep hill, I saw a group of three kids bouncing a ball and throwing it into the air in the middle of the street, pausing only to allow cars to pass by.
“Sondico” read the side of the ball.
I turned to Joshua in amazement, “Bro that’s another ball I gave out today!” I said excitedly.
It brought me an incredible amount of joy seeing the soccer balls out in full force and being cherished and used by the kids on the island following our programs, even late into the night under the dim embrace of street lights. This joy would only grow when I received a message later in the week from Marco, the head of Victoria Insular, who we collaborated with earlier that day.
“I visited some kids yesterday and found them playing with the soccer balls they won on Wednesday. The children were so happy with their new prizes,” he said.
He followed that up by saying that the kids even brought their new balls to a friendly game they were playing later in that week, maintaining the same amount of excitement for their new prized possessions. We see our direct impact in numbers, statistics and of course smiles, but the indirect impact is something I never tangibly see. To drive through the neighborhood and see our hard work in action was incredible and easily became one of my favorite moments during our tenure.
