Focus on Football

I didn't grow up with sports, but I did grow up with ballet (and a strict teacher!). I credit ballet with having taught me discipline, structure, and work ethic; skills I apply to my everyday life. I theorize that kids who grow up playing organized sports acquire these same skills as well as learning to work together towards a common goal and honing individual strengths at the same time.

One of the volunteers here, Xavier Rathlev, has a partnership with an American high schooler working on his Eagle Scout project. Through this boy scout, Xavier had a bunch of football equipment sent to Morocco, enough to make a couple formidable flag football teams. Trials with bringing the football to the Dar Chebab worked overwhelmingly well and he has since been swarmed by children on a daily basis demanding the football that they know is hidden in his backpack. He formed a team pretty quickly, but weekly practices seemed to wane with no prospect of any kind of game against another team. So that's when our friend Ross Wood stepped in and used some of the equipment the boyscout sent to form his own team in Erfoud, his site, about 1.5hrs away from Goulmima, Xavier's site. This was a great motivator.

The First Ever American Flag Football game in Morocco was thus scheduled for March 11th, 2012.

Where do I fit into all this? Xavier and Ross have undoubtedly been my biggest collaborators/partners-in-crime/support system during my Peace Corps service. Once a match was scheduled I was appointed as "head of the boosters" of the Goulmima team. Mostly that meant that my job was to create a buzz about the upcoming game amongst Moroccans in the Goulmima region and amongst Peace Corps volunteers- especially ones who might want to start a team of their own. My cold calling skills from my fundraising days certainly came in handy. The day of the game, we had a full 10% of Peace Corps Volunteers in the country attend! While we didn't have thousands of local spectators attend the game, fliers were passed out at the high school and at souk. The turnout was not too shabby. The photo below shows just a small portion of the audience, which was mainly made up of guys anywhere from 10 to 40.

(Photo by fellow volunteer Katy Howell-Burke)

The day went off without a hitch despite the huge upset of Erfoud winning the game. It was especially moving to see the the players lining up on the sidelines before the match and think that even four months ago the notion of football, or these kids playing on any sports team, didn't exist. I was very proud to be there and to recognize and appreciate all the hard work that went into making the event happen; especially from Xavier, Ross, this Eagle Scout who donated the supplies, Xavier's brothers who dragged two large-enough-to-carry-a-dead-body-in duffel bags to Europe full of football supplies for Xavier to pick up there. (And the minimal impediments of the Moroccan government officials, of course.)

Other Peace Corps Volunteers have begun the preparation to start teams in at least three other cities in Morocco.

While I have liked football since my first home game at SMU, my freshman year, I have learned more about football in the last year and a half of conversations with Xavier than in my entire life prior to Peace Corps. Despite remedial tutoring, and against my better judgments, I was entrusted with the responsibility of being one of the "line judges." I was very nervous and did mess up one play towards the beginning, but I did alright for the rest of the game. In the following video, I can be spotted sprinting around for flashes of a second in a gray sweatshirt.



The song in the background of the video is from the band The S7rawa Boys, whom I have blogged about before here, and whom MTV has also blogged about! The lead rapper, SiMo Klay, is also Goulmima's quarterback and a hard working high school student who has picked up fluent English in his spare time.

We have also gotten press from the International Federation of American Football! They wrote an article about the game, which you can find HERE.

IN BOUARFA NEWS! My environmental science fair competition is THIS WEEKEND! I'm a little nervous about pulling it off since through the majority of the planning my Dar Chebab was closed and I now have no site mate to help me with logistics. (Who is going to entertain the guests while I make tea for the judges!?!) So wish me luck! The winners of this local competition get to go to a final competition in Oujda next month, hosted by another volunteer.