Live The Pitch

Slowly but surely soccer is gaining popularity in the United States. But for Jason Longshore, Soccer in the Streets  is a way of life.

Over the past decade Longshore has gone from being a dedicated volunteer to an integral part of an organization that serves to the underprivileged youth of Atlanta.

Soccer in the Street is a nationwide nonprofit organization based in Atlanta. It uses soccer as a way to teach life-skills to underprivileged children. The mission of the organization is to create sustainable youth development programs in under served communities that cultivate change progress and positive opportunities.

The vision of the organization is use a soccer ball to engage at-risk children everywhere and change their world. Most of the schools it works with have at least 70 percent of its kids on free or reduced lunch. The organization aims to help out children that normally would not have the money to participate in organized sport after school.

“Basically soccer is a way to allow these kids to be successful,” said Longshore. “A lot of people think of us as a traditional soccer club or league, and we’re not. We have some programs that are more soccer specific. In other programs soccer is barely involved, but the sport is always that gateway.”

In 1998, while Longshore was attending the University of Georgia he worked with the Atlanta Ruckus professional soccer team doing communications work. Through his work with the Ruckus, Longshore began volunteering his time organizing soccer clinics for Soccer in the Streets, until the team was bought out a year later. Then Longshore began a career in the music industry, working in retail and event promotions. Although, he gained useful skills while working in music, he did not have a passion for his work.

“I was really missing soccer. It was something I grew up with, and I knew I had to get back to it,” said Longshore.

Luckily for Soccer in the Street, Longshore decided to use it as his way to be involved with the sport that helped him for so much of his life. He e-mailed Jill Robbins, who is the executive director of Soccer in the Streets and began working part-time, helping with press releases, marketing materials and newsletters. That evolved into Longshore becoming the communication director, grant director and coach for the organization.

“Jason has been able to step up and really contribute in many ways with his good ideas and hard work,” said Robbins. “He has been the perfect example of the kind of pattern that lends itself well to this type of work. People who work their way into a position in an organization doing work they love, generally start off as a volunteer and express their commitment from the get-go, regardless of what the compensation is going to be. Longshore was willing to dive in and do what he loved, and now he is making a living of it.”

One of the programs Longshore works with is called Positive Choice, and it is the hallmark of what Soccer in the Streets does. It’s a curriculum that was developed with Atlanta public schools and the boys and girls clubs. It combines teaching soccer skills with specific life skills. Teaching things like respect, communication, ethics and morals and ties that into teaching soccer skills. As children progress in the program, they are offered the opportunity to participate in traditional leagues. Children are also selected to receive career training in the fields of coaching, refereeing, management and communications. Typically participants in this program range from elementary to middle school.

Another program Longshore is involved with is called School-of-Life. It is geared more towards teenagers. They try to tie in tutoring, mentoring and career skills around the game of soccer. Most after school programs are for the younger children, and the teenagers kind of get left out and this is when they can get in trouble. If they have something to do that they enjoy, it keeps them motivated to stay on the right path.

One of Longshore’s students by the name of Jose Guerrero has been in the program for a number of years. When Soccer in the Streets got involved at Riverwood High School they found out he was struggling with his studies. Guerrero was 19, and it was his last semester before he was not allowed to come back. He was a smart kid, but just not motivated about school at all. With English being a second language for him, the language made it that much more difficult.

Then the School-of-Life program started up at his school. Through the program, students organized a marketing drive to bring the largest crowd to a Riverwood soccer game they had ever had. The participants learned about promotions, event management and teamwork. Guerrero ended up helping out with a semi-pro soccer team that played at Riverwood, working the ticket booth. When he started the program he was failing four out of six classes and he had to pass them all to graduate. By the end of the semester, just because he was motivated and he enjoyed coming to school because he had a real purpose, he passed all of his classes and went on to graduate.

“I just want people to know how much I enjoy my job and how much it’s benefited me,” said Longshore. “I can see the benefit it has for the kids that I work with but I don’t think they necessarily see how much it benefits me. I love it. My job motivates me to get up every day. I have worked jobs that I did not enjoy, dread going in, dread getting up, you just don’t enjoy your life. Doing something like this, no matter how much work it is or how hard it is, I am motivated by the fact that I am making a difference. A lot of these kids just need somebody to talk to that cares, that’s the most important thing, I mean I think of them like they are my little brothers.”

Longshore works a lot on the south-side of Atlanta. The team practices twice a week and has a game on the weekend, but when the high school season starts they don’t practice because most of them play for their high schools. But the minute the high school season ended they were asking when they could start to practice again. They didn’t have any games for months but Longshore was constantly getting phone calls from his team saying, “Let’s practice, let’s practice.”

Julio Gomez, 17, is one of the players on that team and has been involved with Soccer in the Streets for almost five years. The program has helped Gomez out a lot with school, but more importantly in life.

“Jason went from a guy that we really didn’t know, to one of the best friends I have,” said Gomez. “He is a guy that helps us with a lot of things. He supports us in everything we do, in school and out of school. He has become a really big part of my life, and it will be really sad to see him go. One time he started sending text messages to the team asking what size shoe we wore. So we were really curious to why he was asking us that. Then one day Jason showed up to practice with a big bag of brand new soccer cleats for the whole team, and we were just so happy. I mean who else just gives you free shoes like that?

“He is guy that is always watching out for us. He’s always making sure that we are comfortable, and that we have everything we need. Don’t get me wrong, we have our good days and our bad days, but he has a positive attitude always. He may have had the worst day ever, but he always stays positive. It keeps us moving forward and we never go back. He is the best coach that I have ever had. I’ve had several coaches and not a lot of them care as much as he does. He cares a lot!”

Soccer may be on the back burner when it comes to professional sports in America. But because of the work Longshore does, the underprivileged youth of Atlanta who participate in the Soccer in the Streets programs can go on to have professional careers in something besides sports.