About, Roots & Values

Now Avila’s main problem is to juggle his studies with his boyhood dream of being a soccer star. But he’s not new to juggling fact and fantasy. After high school he played a European tour with a young team called the American Ambassadors, during which he had been offered a contract with a Dutch team, “which I turned down to go to college.”

Then a year ago, after two years at Fordham University, he took a year off to try out for various soccer clubs in England. He got a two-week tryout with the Liverpool team, one of England’s best. He wasn’t picked up in Liverpool, but did have a four-month stint with a second-division Liverpool team, the Tranmere Rovers. “Even this was almost unheard of for an American and great experience,” he said.

After that, Avila decided to return and continue pre-law studies at Stony Brook, where he had lived on campus as a boy while his mother, Sylvia Smith, and step-father, Peter Smith, were postgraduate students in social work.

The schedule ahead calls for Avila to head south for a practice game March 15 with either Venezuela or Costa Rica. From there, he’ll travel to the Olympic Village of Salinas in Puerto Rico for intensive training and practice games against regional teams through March. The serious stuff starts with “away” and “home” matches, March 22 and 30, against the Dominican Republic, in the opening elimination games for the 1994 World Cup.

“We’re hoping to make history by beating them,” Avila said. “They’re archrivals of Puerto Rico and the game is already sold out.”

The slim, serious Avila, who relaxes to Chopin and Schubert and enjoys political debate, did an internship in the Suffolk County executive’s office two summers ago and for the past three years has been a speaker at Suffolk County’s annual Hispanic Youth Conference. He also volunteers his coaching skills to help young soccer players. “I feel a commitment to the kids—to give back a little of what I got,” he said.

How will he manage the interruption to his studies? Avila, who has a 3.0 grade point average, says he’s lucky that the training comes in spring recess. He’ll only need to catch up on a week of classes, he said, with other training and games scheduled for summer and for as long as his team stays in World Cup competition.

“I’ll take it as it comes,” he said.

An avid 10-mile runner, Avila also embraces healthy eating (“including alfalfa sprouts,” he said) and the Greek ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body.

“He does aerobics with me at my Sunday aerobics class—the only fellow in the class and it doesn’t faze him a bit,” his mother said. “He feels aerobics are a good way to limber up and put in time with his mom.”

All around us a rebellion against organized activities is evident. The emergence of extreme sports such as stunt bike riding and skateboarding, which by their very nature do not involve adult interaction or supervision, are more popular than ever. In these sports, young athletes are encouraged to be as creative as they are daring.

In developing countries, children play sports such as soccer in the streets. No adult structure and formalization corrupts the purity of the street environment. What irony. When left to their own devices, these children negotiate everything from potholes and bad traffic, to low light and stray dogs. They become expert problem solvers with creative solutions for maintaining the action. No one suffers the stigma of being on the bench. Instead, one goal is made large and the other very small to accommodate talent levels. They learn statesmanship and diplomacy and how to interact in positive ways rather than alienating any one player whose absence might cause a small sided game to cease in many cases. Isn’t that what sports are supposed to be teaching our kids?

It is not surprising that during the last few FIFA World Cups, the USA has been hard pressed to find a home grown center midfielder. (This position is also known as the creative midfielder.) Today, the United States has its own professional league, and joining the MSL (Major League Soccer) is the goal of many American youth players. Interestingly, MLS data regarding team rosters clearly shows that most teams occupy the creative midfield position with foreigners, particularly those from developing countries. We are coaching the greatness and the originality out of our youth!

It is time for what noted author Jay Coakely would call a “pleasure and participation model”. There is a crisis and powerful tools are needed for engaging athletes in a way that is keeping with origins of sport. If your youth athlete is in need of some confidence building and self attainment, empower them by offering freedom, not structure; by emphasizing creativity, not competition.

No one would advocate the abolishment of all organized youth sports; they are too important in getting and keeping young people active and involved with their peers. After all, no one would say that the welfare of youth wasn’t the ultimate goal of any of these wonderful organizations. There simply needs to be a shift in the philosophy that drives the programs and curriculums.

That is why all coaches who make a difference everyday should remember that they have the power to not only influence team cohesion but also the power to create the proper team climate. This means creating an interactive setting where an athlete’s ideas are taken seriously. When a coach alters a lesson plan as the direct result of an athlete’s suggestion, that athlete will often take ownership of the practice and perform the drill in a superior way. This step eventually leads to them taking responsibility for their performance on game day. Coaches should not focus only on drills that involve scoring and going to goal. Instead, they might de-emphasize competition and reward non-traditional, under appreciated forms of athleticism such as originality, creativity, rhythm, coordination, and vision.

Some children are more influenced by coaches than any other figure; and so it is incumbent upon the coach to deconstruct some of the negative patters that characterize Western trends in youth sport. The heart of this issue speaks to the true power of coaching; and that, simply put, is that children use sports as cultural mechanisms of socialization. Therefore, the specific way in which sports are rendered (by coaches) affects who and what our children become.

Parents can also foster this type of atmosphere by letting their kids play in unstructured, “pick-up” games in the back yard with siblings and neighbors, or even at the park with other kids that they find there. Let them make up their own games, bend or modify rules, choose teams, and settle dispute s with little or no adult intervention. Observe carefully to make sure that no child is being hurt or bullied, but outside of that, keep out of it. It will teach a multitude of lessons without the kids even knowing it.