Boston’s Other Dream Team
The Red Sox won their World Series. The Pats are 11-0 and the Celts are off to a good start. Meet the Mission Hill Buccaneers. Plucky city kids who haven’t had a lot of breaks in life but took this opportunity and ran with it. Now the undefeated regional Pop Warner champs don’t have the dough to make it to Orlando. Joe Fitz at Boston Herald:
… The Roxbury-based Buccaneers are a C level Pop Warner team that started out with low expectations last summer.
“Many of them didn’t even know how to tackle, block or run a route,” Galvin Leggett, their assistant coach, recalls. “They couldn’t do much of anything. I remember asking Daryl, ‘What are we supposed to do with them?’ But within a month, their confidence began to grow. They were moving the ball on offense, picking up blitzes on defense, even getting into the terminology of blocking down, stepping down.”
The young Bucs would run the table in the Greater Boston League, beating all of their opponents before winning regional honors a week ago by defeating a team from New Haven.
Now, if organizers can raise about $90,000 in a hurry, they can compete in the national Pop Warner tournament next week in Orlando.
For Simmons and Leggett, however, nothing will top the thrills they’ve already experienced. Teammates on Super Bowl squads at West Roxbury High School, these two already know that the best part of sports has nothing to do with the scoreboard.
“At the core of my closest friendships today are the guys I played football with,” Simmons, 37, said. “Galvin’s one of them; he was the best man at my wedding.”
Both would play college ball; Simmons, a flanker, went to Alabama A&M, and Leggett, a cornerback, went to A.I.C. in Springfield. So they don’t just offer hope to their young troops; indeed, they personify it.
“I’ll never forget the day I received my college diploma,” Leggett recalled. “I was the first in our family to go to college. So my grandmother came up from Alabama for my graduation; she’s always been my best friend. And of course Mom was there; I’m the oldest of three, and she did a great job raising us by herself.
“To see the tears in my mother’s eyes that day, and the look on my grandmother’s face, was better than any thrill I ever got on a football field.”
Leggett, 38, is now a case worker for the Department of Youth Services, giving him a bird’s-eye view of what can happen to young lives when guidance is missing and bad choices are made.
“Too many kids feel they have nothing to aim for,” he said. “So what’s happened to these kids is beautiful. They’re like a band of brothers now, staying at each other’s houses, achieving goals together, just like Daryl and I did when we were kids. And the best part is, they’re going to form the fabric of this community in years to come.”
Simmons and Leggett can see that now.
The Buccaneers will understand it better as time goes by. At the moment, however, nothing matters more than finding a way to Florida.
If you’d like to help make that dream come true, you can do so at any branch of Citizens Bank by donating to the Mission Hill Buccaneers Football Fund-Raiser.
“We’re doing it this way so that every penny is accounted for,” Simmons explained. “It’s just another form of discipline.”
It’s a lot of dough for a football game. It’s also a lot of game for some kids who live in a rough part of town, and a couple of guys who are trying to give them something good. My prediction: Boston will come through, hopefully with an assist from the Pats, Sox and Celts.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:19 am on Monday, November 26, 2007
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