Soccer inside the historic Cotton Bowl - a special day for young soccer players
We want all of our camps and clinics to be special. We want them to be fun and engaging, while also being vehicles for quality coaches to teach good soccer. We want all of them to be memorable and meaningful.
But this one was surely extra special.
On March 30, we ran a three-hour clinic for kids from underserved areas all over Dallas. Of 167 young players, aged 10-16, we definitely had a significant percentage of kids from Pleasant Grove. (We made certain of that by spreading the word as SOON as we got confirmation that the day was a “Go!”)
What we also made certain: that all the kids knew this stadium, this field, this home for the State Fair of Texas and this very grass where the one and only Leo Messi played just a few weeks ago was theirs for the day!
Our coaching staff for this one
And I made sure they knew World Cup games have been played inside the historic Cotton Bowl ground. Not to mention the home of Texas-OU, the nationally recognized annual college football rivalry, an iconic part of Dallas history in itself. The United States and Mexican national teams have played here. It was once home to FC Dallas.
And now they had a chance to play on the perfectly manicured field inside this 90-000-seat seat stadium that teems with history. (If you’re not local, the stadium resides inside Fair Park, home of the annual State Fair of Texas, with all of its substantial stacks of history.)
Little Big Tex from the State Fair of Texas made an appearance!
These are the very opportunities that so infrequently fall to young people from underserved areas. It’s the essence of the reason we started Pleasant Grove Soccer & Sports.
We ran the soccer end, while our great partners from the Dallas Police Department’s UNIDOS (Latino Community Outreach) team ran logistics. They also provided coaching staff assistants from the DPD soccer team, and made sure that every camper got a soccer ball and some good food at the end of the clinic. It really was an amazing day — and hopefully an amazing experience.
