MichiganRadio

Do it yourself soccer DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - There's been a big focus in Michigan on getting young people to stay. Sean Mann is one person whose job is to do just that. He works for a group called "Let's Save Michigan." But Mann recently started a project in his free time, pretty much on a whim. He wanted to get people excited about Detroit. And that little project has turned into something big. Michigan Radio's Kyle Norris reports.


About fifty spectators are hanging out on blankets and lawn chairs on the sideline of a soccer field. They're on Detroit's Belle Isle. Tom Dold and his wife Jan are watching their future daughter-in-law play in one of tonight's games, and they're surprised at the turn out.

Dold says, "I mean I fully expected to come out here and find six people on a team, and half of them not here on a given night. And look at this it's unbelievable plus it's a great night sitting here watching the boats go by and watching the ball go up and down the field, it's like a picture in a museum."

There are several games in session and they're all part of the Detroit City Futbol League. Futbol meaning soccer.

Teams are based on neighborhoods, so for example tonight the Hubbard Farms team also known as Mexicantown is playing the Villages team which includes the historic neighborhoods of Indian Village and West Village.

Sean Mann created the soccer league this year. He lives in Hubbard Farms and says usually when his neighborhood came together it was to fight blight or to organize for political reasons. But Mann and his friends figured there had to be a more normal way for people to come together. The idea of playing soccer came up, and Mann says he took the idea and ran with it.


The whole operation is pretty do-it-yourself. A lot of recruiting and promotion was done on FaceBook. The referees are amateurs and before each game Mann rigs up the goal posts himself.

"Even our goals are PVC pipes. I have 200 feet of pipe we cart around in a Ford Taurus all around town. Games take longer to get going cause it takes me awhile to set them up."

I saw one player rip a shot that hit the corner of the post, and the pipe busted apart. They had to stop the game to repair the goal.

Teams are co-ed and most players are in their twenties or thirties. Some played soccer as kids, like Joe Rashid. He heard about the league and wanted to come out and have a good time.

Rashid hadn't played soccer since he was ten and he wanted to see how his skills compared to when he was a kid. "Well I'm not quite at the endurance level when I was ten, but I can still play with them," he says.

Others are entirely new to the sport, like Sandra Yu. "I keep telling people this is the best thing about my life right now," she says. "It makes living in Detroit so amazing, I love it. I look forward to it all day long."

Yu is originally from Ypsilanti. She went to college out east, and came back two years ago for a job in Detroit. She says her job in the city can get really heavy and coming here to play ball is a great antidote to work, because it's light and fun. Yu says this league is the kind of positive thing that Detroit needs.

The players also get to experience different Detroit neighborhoods. After the games, opposing teams decide on a bar to visit in one of their neighborhoods for post-game cocktails.

Sean Mann is amazed at how well things have turned out. There are three hundred and fifty people playing on eleven teams in the league. He expects next year will be even bigger. Mann says the soccer league is helping change the conversation about Detroit from a negative to a positive.

"I think the Detroit story is that this is somewhere where creative people can come and create and do really great things and there's a low barrier of entry and a supportive community around you. I mean if I lived in north side Chicago or Brooklyn I couldn't imagine myself creating something that would be citywide."

Mann says there have been plenty of official efforts to get young people to stay in Michigan. But he says this soccer league shows that ordinary people can step up and create their own things to help move the city and the state forward.

knorris@umich.edu
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