By Yolanda Rodriguez
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
MARIETTA, Ga. — It started simply enough: four kids, two volunteers, one coach.
And a few soccer balls.
“With soccer, it’s a case of moving around — awareness,” said coach Eric McClymont, who is visiting from England.
McClymont took the would-be soccer players through some warm-ups: running around kicking the ball at their feet, quick stops and passes at his signal.
It was just after 9 a.m. and the start of Marietta’s fledgling Police Athletic League. Another three dozen children from the Boys & Girls Club joined the league’s first practice session about 40 minutes later.
They ran onto a former tennis court at Las Colinas apartments on Franklin Road eager for a chance to play.
Soon, the children were learning one another’s names and how to pass and kick.
It was the start of what founders hope will lead to so much more.
The Marietta Police Department is developing its PAL using the international language of soccer. The department’s focus is Franklin Road, an area in the city’s sights for improvement.
The payoff, police hope, is less crime, a better neighborhood, more community ties, and a better relationship between officers and residents.
“They will be able to come up to us. Right now, they can’t,” said Sgt. Michael Goins, who is spearheading the Marietta PAL.
“They [will] see a police officer in a different light. Most of the time when they see us, we are locking somebody up,” said Goins, who heads the department’s Crime Interdiction Unit.
“We are there to help the kids,” he said. “We have a job to do, but we are there to help them and their friends. I can walk through the complex now, and no kids will come up and talk to me now.”
Police hope the organized sport will grab children while they are young — young enough to be influenced and before they start getting in trouble.
“When I was growing up, I always played sports,” said Detective J. Moeller, who grew up in Cincinnati, one of the league’s coach-mentors.
“I think it was a big contributing factor in keeping me out of trouble, of keeping the negative influences away,” he said. “So, I hope we can do that with these kids.”
Although practices have already begun, children in the Franklin and Delk roads area can still sign up. Eventually, Goins wants to offer basketball and football. He also wants to expand the PAL to other parts of the city.
The department hired the nonprofit Soccer in the Streets program to kick off the first sport in the league. Soccer in the Streets will teach the newbie coaches the rules of the game and how to be mentors, said Jill Robbins, the group’s executive director.
Teaching coaching is the easy part, Robbins said. Teaching life skills through soccer is the focus of the program.
The sport is used as a way to teach life skills, she said.
Respect, for example, is associated with ball touches.
“Because how you treat the ball will determine how it responds to you,” Robbins said.
“Just like how you treat people will determine how they respond to you. Also you need to have respect for yourself, respect for other people and respect for the ball.”
The soccer program is starting in two complexes, Glenbrooke and Las Colinas. Unused tennis courts have been converted for the soccer games.
Eventually, Goins wants to have a team play in the YMCA soccer league.
So far, Goins, four other police officers and a department administrative assistant have signed up as coaches, although some are a bit nervous about the prospect — they don’t know much about soccer.
“It’s a good start,” said Goins, who is the head basketball coach at Marietta Middle School.
He knows from his basketball coaching experience that sports and police officers can have a positive influence on children’s lives.
And when crime occurs, police hope that the work they’ve done with the children will help them.
“They’ll know to talk to you, to tell you what’s going on,” Goins said. “It’s a trust thing.”
He picked soccer as the starter sport because of the large Hispanic population on Franklin Road.
Children will learn how to play the game well, said Angela Smith, the property manager at Las Colinas. In May, she started a league for adults and children living in her complex to play among themselves.
But playing will also teach the children “discipline, leadership, motivation,” Smith said.
And at the end of last week’s first practice, Aliyah Jennings, 8, summed it all up:
“It was the best thing I’ve ever seen. ... I’m thinking in my head ‘Wow! Look at this game.’ This is the best.”
Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution