Soccer connects kids, cops, and communities in Bridgeton, N.J.
The Alms Center’s gleaming gymnasium was alive with the squeak of sneakers and the slap of futsal balls against hardwood as coach Leon Brown’s Caribbean-inflected commands cut through the exuberant din.
“Elbows! Knees!”
Coach Marcus Littlefield, who hails from the United Kingdom, picked up the tempo as he and Brown led 16 boys and girls through a “body parts” drill.
“Eyes! Ears! Noses!”
On otherwise quiet Thursday evenings in Bridgeton, a quaint-but-tough-around-the-edges city in Cumberland County, N.J., a faith-based organization and the local Police Athletic League are providing soccer practices with professional coaches like Brown and Littlefield to the community’s Mexican and other Latinx children. The goals include family fun, player development — and a fostering of trust between the city’s large Spanish-speaking immigrant community and the Bridgeton police.
“It opens the door,” said Jon Cummings, who served as a Christian missionary in Mexico and Africa and is executive director of Revive South Jersey (a.k.a. Revive SJ),a ministry-outreach nonprofit that works to meet the physical and spiritual needs of communities. The organization proposed the program and partnered with PAL, which runs basketball and skating programs for city youth. “We want this to be a win for everyone.”
Said Bridgeton PAL director Josh Thompson, a 25-year police veteran: “Some Mexicans in the city have been afraid to report crimes to the police, out of a lack of trust or fear they could get deported. Soccer has connected a lot of people in the Mexican community with the police department, and with other PAL programs.”
Established last year after Revive SJ consulted with Bridgeton’s United Advocacy Group, a social-services provider, the soccer program also offers counseling, ESL and GED instruction,as well as nutrition and cooking classes for parents viathe Inspira Health Network.
“Bridgeton PAL Soccer has been an ideal partner,” Inspira president Amy B. Mansue said in a statement, allowing the network to reach not only the youngsters themselves, but their families, too.
Revive SJ and other sponsors help pay for coaches from the New Jersey Surf Soccer Club. Part of a national network of clubs, New Jersey Surf has so far provided scholarships enabling two rising Bridgeton players to join travel teams that play opponents of higher skill levels.
“We have kids who never played a game of soccer before,” said Brown, who lives in Ocean City. “We have kids as young as 5 and as old as 16. The most important thing is for them to come into a space and feel as if they’re not being judged. To have them keep coming for that hour and a half every Thursday is golden.”
