MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia is half an hour's drive from the stadium that hosted the city's World Cup soccer matches. The distance often feels much greater, and that is because Kensington has one of the country's most dangerous street drug markets. NPR's Brian Mann found the neighborhood is also home to a thriving soccer culture.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: On a hot summer morning in Kensington, people sag in doorways next to shuttered businesses in the shadow of the elevated train. This neighborhood in Philadelphia has been plagued for decades by poverty and crime. Fentanyl and methamphetamines hit hard here. But there are also kids walking to summer school, playing on stoops.
BARBYOSE NOISETTE: There are working families here, just like any other neighborhood in this country.
MANN: That's Barbyose Noisette, who runs a program called the Kensington Soccer Club. It's one part sports organization, one part safety net.
NOISETTE: It's one kid at a time. We have coaches who are able to pick them up and bring them to practice and take them home. And we have safe places for them.
UNIDENTIFIED SOCCER PLAYER #1: Get in goal. Get in goal.
MANN: On this day, in a dusty field in Kensington, a couple dozen kids scramble up and down, kicking a ball.
UNIDENTIFIED SOCCER PLAYER #2: (Yelling, inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED SOCCER PLAYER #3: It's our ball.
MANN: Eight-year-old Kaylanni Brooks is one of the fiercest players on the pitch, scrimmaging with boys and girls twice her size.
What position do you play?
KAYLANNI BROOKS: I don't know.
MANN: You just kind of run around and kick the ball?
KAYLANNI: Yeah.
STEPHANIE SANTIAGO: Everything but goalie.
MANN: That's Stephanie Santiago, Kaylanni's mom. They've lived in Kensington their whole lives.
SANTIAGO: People assume that, like, there's a lot of gun violence, a lot of drugs.
MANN: There are also just regular families here, like hers, Santiago says. But on some blocks, crime is dangerous enough kids can't play outside. Local public schools have cut PE and after-school programs for budget reasons. And most soccer club programs are too expensive. She says Kensington Soccer Club is different.
SANTIAGO: It provides a space where kids can come play safely. It's a fraction of what we would pay if we were going to a different club. So KSC makes it affordable.
MANN: The club was created 14 years ago by a public school teacher named Jim Hardy, who's still a volunteer with the group. Hardy says he loves soccer and started hearing from his students that they wanted to play.
JIM HARDY: And I looked everywhere, and the only thing I could find was something that was half an hour away and cost $3,000.
MANN: What started as an after-school pickup game for high schoolers kept growing, funded mostly by grants and donations. It now includes up to 2,000 kids a year. Hardy says one thing that weighs on him is they still lack the staff to reach all of Kensington's kids.
HARDY: It's infuriating to me that it's so hard to provide them with a small percentage of what many children might take for granted in other neighborhoods and suburban communities.
MANN: The club was able to reach Nagee Morrison, who started playing for Kensington when he was a teenager. Now 28, he works as a coach and a mentor. As he watches kids scrimmage, Morrison says he thinks this is making Kensington a better place.
NAGEE MORRISON: This is my community. This is why I coach and do it. We try to do our best around here to get the kids to come to a better, open space. And they love it when they come out here.
MANN: For Morrison, Kensington Soccer Club is also a source of pride. Teams from his neighborhood now hold their own against a lot of Philadelphia's higher-priced soccer clubs.
MORRISON: So it took a minute for us to build up there. But I can say now we could go and crush a lot of suburban teams.
MANN: One more bit of joy - seats for World Cup soccer games in Philadelphia have been selling for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars apiece, but the club received a bunch of donated tickets, making it possible for many of these kids to see games live. Brian Mann, NPR News, Philadelphia.
(SOUNDBITE OF A-YUE CHANG'S "SINKING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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