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LOS ANGELES — Susan Miller Dorsey High, a public school nestled in one of Los Angeles’ historically black neighborhoods, was once a high school football powerhouse in the city. The program nurtured NFL talent like Keyshawn Johnson and won five conference championships from 1982 to 2001.
But coach Stafon Johnson estimated that heading into his first team meeting of 2021, he had five players on his roster. After the July meeting, it was around 5 p.m., he said.
“There was no interest,” Johnson said in an interview. “Our history and traditions stand tall on their own, but we ask ourselves, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ »
The list eventually ballooned to 51, enough for Johnson to successfully complete his first season as coach of his alma mater. But the numbers are in stark contrast to the golden era, when up to 80 players wore green and white uniforms on Friday nights.
Dorsey’s challenges illustrate the struggle, as well as the promise, of youth soccer in Los Angeles. A survey conducted by the LA84 Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports youth sports programs, found that in 2019, 17.1% of children ages 6 to 17 played tackle or flag football -football in Los Angeles County. That’s a 2% increase from 2018, and officials said they’ve seen an increase in participation in youth leagues during the pandemic.
But even though football is growing, it still lags behind other sports. Only 15 percent of boys played soccer, far behind basketball (34.5 percent), soccer (29.5 percent), baseball (25.4 percent), swimming (24.5 percent). percent) and running (18.5 percent).
Changing demographics and parental concerns about safety are among the factors behind soccer’s modest presence in one of the nation’s most important markets. But coaches and officials hope the return of the Rams and Chargers and the excitement of the Super Bowl in Inglewood, Calif., will continue to fuel kids’ interest in the sport.
“If you have two clubs there, you want the football affinity to be high,” said Roman Oben, the NFL’s vice president of football development. “It’s a travesty if football isn’t big in one of the greatest cities in the world, despite everything that’s going on.”
Programs like that of Saint-Jean-Bosco High School, a private boys’ school east of Los Angeles, regularly feeds colleges with blue-chip recruits, and 170 players on NFL rosters in 2020 were from California, ranking it third among States of the country. But the overall health of youth soccer in the Los Angeles area is complex, said Renata Simril, president and CEO of LA84.
Affluent schools with a rich football history, she said, appear to be remaining steadfast in their participation. Schools with fewer resources, like Dorsey, may face obstacles.
Simril grew up in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles, and remembers Dorsey in his heyday. A sea change over the decades has led to profound changes across the entire youth soccer landscape, she said.
Many in the African American community migrated away from urban areas and the county has become increasingly Hispanic. And even as soccer’s appeal among Hispanics accelerates, soccer remains the culture’s dominant sport.
The cost of living in Los Angeles has increased, and the price of pads and other equipment has made soccer unattractive compared to sports that require only a ball. All activities compete for a limited playing space, with certain areas reserved for a specific sport. Add in the other things Los Angeles has to offer, like the beach and the entertainment industry, plus parents’ concerns about head injuries, and you have a challenging environment for maintaining consistent participation levels in youth soccer .
“It’s just a matter of demographics,” Simril said. “I think traditional American soccer in Los Angeles, given the demographics of the surveys we’re doing, will take time to break into the top five as soccer continues to grow.”
Flag football is a good way to introduce boys and girls to the sport, Simril said, and can ease parents’ concerns about safety. Last month, the Rams and Chargers teamed up to create a women’s flag football league and submitted a proposal to have the sport sanctioned as a girls’ high school sport.
Simril was part of the committee that pitched Los Angeles as a Super Bowl city to NFL owners during a 2016 meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. Simril articulated part of his speech on the history of Caylin Moore, who grew up between Compton, California, and Carson, in an abusive home. He played in a youth soccer league, crediting his coach as a father figure, then competed in high school and college at Texas Christian.
He became a Rhodes Scholar and is now a doctoral student at Stanford. Simril, in his speech, said the increased visibility of a Super Bowl could inspire more children to play football, allowing coaches to help them develop similar positive character traits.
After Los Angeles got the game, the Rams and Chargers moved to the city and began financially supporting youth leagues and holding camps and clinics for players and coaches. Although the Lakers and Dodgers are considered the leading professional sports organizations in the market, Johnson said he believes the clubs’ efforts could help motivate young players. In the two decades that Los Angeles didn’t have a franchise, USC was the closest thing the city had to an NFL team, he said.
“Having them here, it helps,” Johnson said. “I think the reality of where football can take you is going back to downtown.”
Recruitment Efforts
Johnson played at Dorsey as a running back, totaling 5,777 career yards, and later at USC. While Johnson was pressing during his senior college season, the bar slipped, landing on his neck and crushing his throat. He recovered and signed with the Tennessee Titans in 2010 as an undrafted free agent, but he never played a regular season game in the NFL.
He joined Dorsey as an assistant in 2014 and was promoted to head coach in 2019. The Dons won only three games the previous season and interest in football at the school was steadily declining, Johnson said . Then, three months after he was hired, the coronavirus pandemic hit and the California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports, finally canceled fall sports championships.
As conditions improved, the state adopted a shortened football season for spring 2021, but Dorsey opted out. Johnson said the short time frame would have made it difficult to build a team and train properly, which could also have led to injuries. it could also have resulted in injury.
“I feel like I wasn’t able to leave my mark on these kids,” Johnson, 34, said. “If I were to rush in and start doing it, it would have escalated. »
At the July team meeting, Johnson and the athletes knew they had to recruit. Javaun Lewis, a freshman running back, was particularly concerned about the small corps of offensive linemen. He and other players reached out to their friends in their immediate circle and others who they thought might be influenced. But he didn’t beg.
“I really focused on being myself,” Lewis said of his recruiting pitch. “I didn’t have much time to chase people.»
The roster grew as the school year approached, but Dorsey was unable to play in the first game of the season because the school did not have enough nurses to handle physical exams of the players and carry out Covid tests. After this setback, the Dons finished the season. The play was sloppy at times — against Crenshaw High, Dorsey’s main rival, the teams groped a total of eight times – but the Dons finished with a 10-3 record.
“It should only go up from here,” Lewis, 15, said. “From where we started to now, it’s been a good start.”
For now, Johnson is preparing for his second season, holding workouts for players on a public field across the street from Dorsey. Lewis expects to have new teammates.
“I’ve heard some things through the grapevine, but I haven’t seen anything yet,” he said. “When the season comes, we’ll see.”
