EASTSIDE : Lack of Players Dooms Youth Team

A Pop Warner team has folded for the year, not so much because of lack of funding, but because it has been unable to recruit enough players for its games.

The Boyle Heights Wolfpack, founded five years ago, forfeited three of seven games this season, said Assistant Coach Miguel Quintero. The Wolfpack’s Junior Bantam division team, for 13- and 14-year-olds, was scheduled to play its last game of the season today, but the team disbanded after its game last week.

Pop Warner officials allowed the team to open up its enrollment after the official deadline in early October, but the team still failed to attract more players, Quintero said.

“It’s hard to explain,” Quintero said. “I think it’s a difference of generations. The interest is not there.”

The team started off with 26 youths in late August, but the number of players has dwindled to below the required 18 players set by the King’s Football Conference. The Midgets division team, for 11- and 12-year-olds, has maintained a full squad and will play its final game of the season today as scheduled.

Aside from the waning interest this year, Coach Nissim Leon said the Wolfpack had always had problems with funding. They received equipment and uniform donations from Salesian and Roosevelt high schools and are sponsored in part by Manuel Rojas’ El Tepeyac Restaurant. Some of the players who left the team kept their shirts or pants without permission, leaving the program bare.

“We’re the surplus of football,” said Leon, who grew up with Quintero playing Pop Warner games at Salazar Park. They also played against Assistant Coach Hugh Ramirez when they attended Roosevelt High School and he played for Garfield High School.

More than 300 youths have played on the Boyle Heights team since it was formed; one, Tony Avila, now plays football at Whittier College.

“We decided to get together and do something for the kids of our area,” he said. “For us, it’s not even about football. It’s getting these kids involved in something.”

Other teams in the league have 30 or 40 people involved, including players, coaches and other volunteers, Leon said. “We can’t get people to help us. We’ve done it the old-fashioned way and gone to the local merchants, but we have been unsuccessful,” he said.

The coaches are writing proposals for donations through the California Community Foundation to see if they can revive the program next year, Leon said.