This entire summer, about 50 young men, all under the age of 15 –left the mean streets for the green grass at the Yabra field. That’s where they’ve been training ever morning under the tutelage of football all stars Ali Thurton, Deon McCauley, and Ian Gaynair. And on Saturday those boys will play like men in round one of the under 13 and under 15 - football knockout tournament which begins at 10 am. Only 6 teams will make it to the finals. Jerome “Peel-Off” Mejia and City Councillor Phillip Willoughby are the organizers.
Jerome ‘Peel Off’ Mejia, Organizer
“We have a U13 football marathon and a U15 football marathon on Saturday August 9th. We are trying to alleviate some of the problems we have in the community so we decided we will come up with this tournament. The kids have been here from July under some basic training with some of the players from the national
team. Right now we have a nice set of kids here and I think we could work with them and see some future in these kids.”
Phillip Willoughby, City Councilor for Sports
“For the past three years we’ve been promoting a community based development program. We have football, which is the highlight of the whole camp, we have other disciplines that we open the kids to – basketball and baseball and thus far it has been successful three years in a row.
I just want to ask all the football enthusiasts to come out and get pass the pre-qualifying round this Saturday and hopefully they get to compete against the top six teams in both categories and they will be competing for a set of jersey for the team that wins and boots and trophies. Then after that we get into a second leg of the program which is a second tournament that will be for all three disciplines.”
Jerome ‘Peel Off’ Mejia,
“It will be a nice tournament for youths because enough of the youths don’t participate in nothing so with this tournament we know we’ll get out a lot of youths.”
Saturday’s pre-qualifying knockout tournament starts at 10 am at the Yabra field. Entrance is of course free. The finals will be held on Saturday August 16th.
