Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

A society of soccer

Children and parents transform a little patch of Wimauma into a soccer Field of Dreams.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published October 28, 2005

WIMAUMA - The soccer field glows in the dark.

There are no streetlights here. You turn down Seventh Street, passing single-wides, chain-link fences and live oaks, and at the end of the street is an otherworldly white light.

"It looks like a flying saucer," Enrique Gallegos said. "When you're coming down the street, you think a spaceship is landing here. It's beautiful."

Five years ago, there were no lights. There was barely a real field. Five years ago, when Felicia Diaz, now 14, wanted to play soccer with her friends, their parents had to park here with their headlights on. Kids would play in the light shining over uneven ground.

The Rural Youth Soccer Association, or RYSA, has transformed this little patch of Wimauma. It has transformed the kids who play here, and the adults who coach them.

"All we had here was a little table and three portable bathrooms, that's it," said Jessica Diaz, 16. "This place used to be not that safe."

"I didn't even know how to kick a ball," said Maria Diaz, 12.

The Diaz girls are strong, fast, and powerful. It's a Thursday night, after practice, and they're shining with sweat. They laugh together at the way things used to be, at how far they've come.

Enrique Gallegos' father was a tomato picker, following the crop seasons north from Texas. In the evenings, when he came home from work, he would gather the neighborhood kids together and teach them how to play soccer in the street.

"He was from Mexico," said Gallegos, who is in his second year as RYSA's president. "He used to play, his father and his grandfather used to play. I had this in my blood, you know?"

In Wimauma, where 70 percent of the population is Hispanic, a lot of people feel the same way.

"This is my people," said Saturnino Garcia, a construction overseer. "This is my game. I got soccer in my veins."

Miguel Rodriguez, a truck driver, said he remembers playing soccer as a kid in his hometown of Guanajuato, Mexico, with an orange instead of a ball.

In Wimauma, his kids grew up the same way - desperate to play even though there were no formal sport programs, he said.

"They played inside the house, outside the house," he said. "They keep playing always."

In the summer of 2000, the county Parks and Recreation Department started a six-week summer soccer program.

Carl Floyd, 48, was coaching for the South Hillsborough Soccer League that year. His assistant coach asked him to come down to Wimauma and help out. They needed someone with coaching experience, he said.

Floyd, who lives in Sundance, learned soccer the same way Miguel Rodriguez and Saturnino Garcia and Enrique Gallegos did - in Spanish, and "in the streets," he said.

His parents were missionaries; Floyd grew up in Costa Rica. When he moved to the United States at age 14, he stopped speaking Spanish, but he kept playing soccer.

Floyd agreed to help coach the Wimauma teams. But he said he wasn't prepared for what he found.

"When I first saw an under-10 team play and I saw one of the kids kick the ball 30 yards out and score a goal . . . it was an incredible sight," he said. "It gave me goose bumps."

It did something to him he can't quite describe.

"I fell in love," he said.

Floyd helped organize teams. He coached through the six-week program.

But then, he said, "The kids didn't want to quit playing . . . I had parents come to me and say, "How do we keep going?"'

"I was scared of Wimauma," Mary Floyd says.

She's leaning on the counter of the concession stand on a balmy night.

Out in the field, five or six different teams - from under-10 to adult - are playing. "Coach Mary," as she's now universally known, is minding the concession stand while her own team runs drills on its own.

"Hey!" she calls through the night, her voice a bullhorn. "If you don't stop hanging off that goal, you're going to make Coach Mary mad! And you don't want to make Coach Mary mad!"

Before she started coaching, she said, she only knew Wimauma for its gangs, its drug deals.

Now this field is her second home.

"I don't say I have five beautiful children," she said. "I have 320 beautiful children."

She remembers the early games, when she and Carl and the other coaches would take their teams to play kids from Brandon and Town 'N Country.

Sometimes, the kids from Wimauma got called names.

The names stopped when they started to play.

Carl says that he sometimes had to coach his team to score fewer goals, so they wouldn't embarrass the other team.

"They said we were poor sports, running up the score," he said.

Anabel Rodriguez forgot her cleats. She has to sit and watch her team practice.

It's a dreamy, buggy night in Wimauma. A festival of ants carry on their business in the grass. Anabel is 9; she wears glasses. She has nine brothers and sisters and is crazy about soccer.

Her favorite team is Chivas, from her father's home town of Guadalajara, Mexico. When she watches their games, her heart races. The only better thing, she says, is actually playing.

"When you play," she says, "it feels like you're a professional, and you can make any goal on anyone.

"When I grow up, I'm going to let my kids play soccer. And every time there's a game, I'll let them go with their dad. And I will be cheering them on."

Along with the league's first president, Irving Castillo, and others, the Floyds talked to the county and formed a full-fledged league under the auspices of Florida Youth Soccer Association.

In part because of how many people volunteer, the league is perhaps the cheapest in the county. Coach Mary says it's the cheapest in Florida.

Instead of charging hundreds of dollars to play on a competitive team, the price is $85 per player - $35 for recreational teams.

To keep costs low, parents and coaches pitched in to level the vast field behind Wimauma Elementary School.

Through the county, they obtained grants to buy stadium lighting, a concession stand and bleachers.

Enrique Gallegos said he cried as he switched on the lights for the first time and that white glow lit the steamy air.

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 28, 2005, 01:35:22]