Here is what the Grapevine Independent Online Newspaper had to say about Playmakers last week:
“Any parent with children involved in activities knows the expenses can add up. Most sports have a registration fee, often include special equipment like bats or cleats and items like gloves, wristbands, snacks, with Gatorade and eye-black piled on for good measure.
Throw a second or third child into the mix and a hundred bucks or so can quickly grow to a hefty expense. For youth football, this burden is often magnified as youth leagues need to provide proper safety equipment for players of differing ages and sizes – which adds up quickly.
A locally-based group called Playmakers has come up with a simple solution for this expense: get someone else to pay it. The group’s director, former NFLer Greg Roeszler, said Playmakers is slowly building a base of business partners interested in the group’s goals and, come Fall, should have enough financial support to offer a full youth football program at no cost to the participants.
Certainly Roeszler hasn’t brought business partners onboard with Playmakers just for the pursuit of free football. Playmakers has an established reputation for character-based coaching instruction with an eye toward using football as a tool to instill particular ethics that the program’s participants might be otherwise lacking, like respect, courage, discipline and similar concepts.
“We use football as a means to get all of the kids together and then utilize that as an opportunity to help teach them the values that go into becoming a respectable man,” Roeszler said.
And the message is slowly getting out. Playmakers run their program after school at the converted Riverview Elementary. The sessions include time in the classroom to complete homework and then about 40-45 minutes (as available daylight warrants) to practice some football fundamentals.
The group has about 25-30 players now, but Roeszler is hoping to get more than 100 kids by the time the season is ready to start. The ages of the players range from about 7 to about 12 and, ideally, Playmakers will have teams for different age divisions.
“We just really believe football has a lot of great life lessons to teach,” Roeszler said. “We want to reach out to these kids and give them a chance to learn those lessons in an environment where they can have some fun, too.”
And the values are sinking in. Few kids miss sessions and most, like Carmani Shedrich, can recite Playmakers’ core principles – like SLANT. “S means sit up front, L means lean forward, A means act iNterested, and T means track the teacher,” Shedrich said.
Being dedicated to school work is only one aspect of the lessons stressed by Playmakers. Participants must also strive to conduct themselves properly, or as Playmakers would say, with character. Most of the participants know character means, “doing the right thing when no one’s looking.”
The character lessons are sometimes hard to maintain, and the penalties of accountability are sometimes difficult, but the pursuit of those higher expectations seem to be as much of a draw for the players as running pass routes and catching footballs.
“I wasn’t always doing good things,” said Vincent Dyson. “But I have been more since I’ve been playing football…and I’ve gotten my grades up, too.”
Nevertheless, there’s no denying the lure of football. One of the program’s older participants, Trevor Chew, acknowledged the opportunity to do homework and learn character-based lessons is good. “I was raised to be respectful, but it still helps because I get mad sometimes and forget,” Chew said. But the bottom line for most of the players is football. “I’ve never really been on a team before, so I really love it,” Chew added.
Roeszler is quick to admit to the potential conflict with the Jr. Lancers, but hoped the programs could peacefully co-exist. “I’ll be the first person to say the last thing anyone needs is another football program,” Roeszler said. “We just believe so strongly in football’s ability to reach out to the kids in our community who really deserve a shot at growing up to become successful people.”
For more information, visit www.theplaymakers.org, or call 916-220-1284.
