Helping to Mold Good Sports in Game of Life

Linda Coleman is coaching her 11-year-old daughter’s soccer team on a shoddy field in Boyle Heights with the hope that the girl and her friends will begin adolescence differently than she did.

Coleman is convinced that, if she had been allowed to play softball as a girl, she would have avoided her early encounters with gangs and alcohol while growing up.

“If kids are not involved in something organized, they get into gangs, drugs or get pregnant,” said Coleman, 42, a volunteer coach and mother of six.

Hope for their four daughters also drives Joanne and Corey Birdsall to show up six days a week at Bodger Park in Hawthorne, where they volunteer their time so that their children and hundreds of others can play soccer and volleyball.

“The place we’re living now isn’t the greatest, so I’d rather have them here where I can keep an eye on them,” said Corey Birdsall, 43, a church janitor who lives in another part of Hawthorne.

Coleman and the Birdsalls are some of the 700 volunteers who help run 14 sports clubs operated by Kids in Sports. Each year the nonprofit group introduces more than 9,000 children, mostly from “underserved neighborhoods” throughout Los Angeles County, to athletic activities ranging from baseball to basketball to swimming.

The clubs rely on parents and other adults volunteering as coaches and club board members. Local school and park officials help out by providing fields and courts for games and rooms for meetings.

The folks at Kids in Sports teach the parent volunteers how to coach and run the clubs. They also provide uniforms and referees.

The community effort allows children who hail from some of Los Angeles County’s toughest neighborhoods to experience what it’s like be part of a team and gain athletic skills.

“I believe that sport participation is a birthright,” said Anita DeFrantz, president of Kids in Sports and an International Olympic Committee member from Los Angeles. “We are working to make certain that every child has access to this birthright.”

DeFrantz, who also is president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation, hoped to promote European-styled sports clubs in Los Angeles County, and Kids in Sports was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1994 with seed money from the foundation.

DeFrantz envisions a day when each of the clubs becomes self-sustaining so that Kids in Sports, which operates on a $1.3-million budget, can open clubs in different neighborhoods.

Keith Cruickshank, executive director of Kids in Sports, estimates that his group is two to three years away from spinning off its first club.

“It’s tough,” Cruickshank said. “We’re working with people who are stretched in all different ways.”

Coleman, for example, is not your typical soccer mom. She doesn’t own a car, let alone a sport utility vehicle, so she travels to Pecan Park by foot. And unlike some parents, she emphasizes “fun before winning.”

Coleman, who works part time as a sports coordinator for the city of Los Angeles, said she could use more help from other parents. But in many cases, she added, both parents are working long days.

Because Kids in Sports provides uniforms and referees to officiate games, Coleman said, her club is able to keep fees low. Parents are asked to pay $15 per sports season, which covers trophies and an awards banquet. Not all families can afford even that modest fee, prompting Coleman to occasionally dig into her own pockets.

As dusk set upon Pecan Park on a recent evening, Coleman prepared a team of 16 girls, the Scorpion Queens, for an evening match with a visiting team from Cypress.

One moment Coleman is ordering the girls to stretch and practice with soccer balls, the next she’s passing out their mandatory identification cards. Later, Coleman becomes a human jewelry box as the girls, who range in age from 9 to 12, hand her their earrings and necklaces before they take the field.

“Defense! Cover the goal!” Coleman barks at her team as the game gets underway.

The game ends in a tie, 1 to 1.

A similar scenario is played out the next night in Hawthorne, only on a much grander scale. Corey and Joanne Birdsall are keeping an eye on three different soccer games at Bodger Park, doing just about everything -- recruiting possible coaches, hunting down a missing goal and rounding up some girls for a game of volleyball.

It’s not uncommon for Joanne to help her husband finish up his day job at the church so that they can make it to the park by 6 p.m. to prepare for weeknight practices and games. They’re back at the park on Saturdays for more games and assorted minor crises.

The sports club the Birdsalls help run at Bodger Park includes 23 soccer and four volleyball teams. Corey is the club’s president and Joanne coordinates the girls’ teams.

At the same time, the Birdsalls are busy raising their four daughters, three of whom play on teams.

“Come Saturday around 6 p.m. I’m wondering why I’m doing it,” Corey Birdsall said. “But then I see the kids and I’m off and running again.”

“For some of these kids,” Joanne Birdsall added, “this is what they live for.”