they are the landowner and they believe that the project can be completed."
Major League Soccer's support could well pay dividends in the future, as the futsal field project promises to make soccer a more accessible and appealing sport to inner-city youths used to playing small-sided and fast-paced sports in small spaces. The same way that inner-city courts have played an important role in the development of basketball players in the U.S., soccer in South America and Europe has benefited greatly from games like futsal in places where space is limited.
"In our communities kids need to have opportunities to take a ball and either go out by themselves and play, or maybe find one other person," said Smalls. "So we have to work on the perception that you need a full-size field, coaches and two full teams to play soccer. We have to look at this and understand the psyche of kids in the inner-city and understand what they want to do or what they want to play.
"The ultimate goal is to have an inner-city soccer academy here in Harlem," said Smalls. "It's going to take some time to get there, but definitely with the increased exposure and the things that have happened with the support of MLS to get our presence out there, more people are hearing about us and we have had a huge spike in people wanting to play soccer in the community, right here in Harlem. The development is coming slowly, but I can definitely see it happening."
While long-term efforts may see top quality players produced, Smalls is keen to make sure that his youngsters develop more than just their soccer skills at FC Harlem.
"Our key principle is that we're really trying to create leaders in the neighborhood, hence the L.I.O.N.S. acronym (Leaders In Our Neighborhoods)," said Smalls. "We're not trying to sell dreams that all these kids are going to become star players, but we definitely believe that there are opportunities for these kids to go to college, be positive and do good things in whatever they're doing.
"Sometimes people can become too obsessive and try to make all their kids into stars too early," continued Smalls. "We're not in that direction yet and it's not the right way to go in our community. We have to get them to love the sport first, to enjoy it, and then we can start to really engage them and educate them on the different levels of the sport -- what their kids can do with it, what the opportunities are for college.
"The academy model is something long-term, and we're still figuring out what that model looks like," said Smalls. "It may not be a traditional residential academy; it has to be something different because I believe in preparing kids for life. It has to have an academic component and it's not going to be a soccer school with tutors. It has to be providing academic training but with the sport of choice. The sport that will be played at this academy -- in whatever form it takes -- will be soccer."
With large numbers of immigrants in Harlem and the surrounding neighborhoods, Smalls -- a former college football player at Penn State -- sees soccer as an obvious choice to engage the community.
"Soccer, for the most part -- especially in the African-American community -- is still a developing sport," said Smalls. "But Harlem is unique in that it has a lot of immigrants, and a lot of those immigrants bring the sport with them. There's a large African population here and there's a large Hispanic population, and most of them are bringing the sport as their first traditional sport. What's been unique -- and actually been part of our strategy -- is having and using the support from our African and Hispanic immigrants and participants who play the sport to really start to gain the interest of the African-American families who are in the community and are starting to see that soccer is an interesting sport.
"It will be great to have (the fields) completed going into a World Cup year," Smalls continued. "With the World Cup being in South Africa, it's a great opportunity to really engage African-Americans.
"We definitely saw after the World Cup in 2006, there was a huge spike in people calling and wanting to play soccer at FC Harlem," said Smalls. "We want to be in a good position so that if that happens again -- which I totally believe it will -- we would have these additional fields to really be in a position to support the interest and keep getting more kids playing."
Smalls recognizes that soccer "has a real impact for social change," and that belief is clearly the cornerstone of his efforts at FC Harlem. The long-term goal to build an academy is tentatively scheduled for 2014 -- and U.S. soccer may feel the benefits for many years to follow. But in the meantime, FC Harlem will continue to serve as a life-changing platform for local children, teenagers and families in the surrounding area -- combining the sport of soccer with social and academic betterment.
For more information on FC Harlem and to learn how you can help with their efforts, visit http://www.fcharlemlions.org. Donations can be mailed to FC Harlem, 476 West 145th St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10031.
Patrick Thurston is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
