by Joe Hirsch
news@huntspointexpress.com
More than touchdowns are at stake for young players
Young Bronxites are donning shoulder pads again this fall for the South Bronx Chargers. Nearly a hundred South Bronx youth aged 6-14, will compete in four different divisions based on weight, as part of Moving the Chains, a Hunts Point based non-profit that has been teaching kids the virtues of discipline and teamwork on and off the gridiron since 2005.
Curtis Minnis, 33, grew up in Morrisania, and administers the program out of his two-bedroom apartment on Hoe Avenue, with his long-time friend Edmond Wilson. Minnis and Wilson hope that with increased visibility and local support, the program will eventually do well enough to be housed in a proper office somewhere in Hunts Point.
“I looked at myself and said, Curtis, what are YOU going to do?” said Minnis about his decision to start the non-profit three years ago.
Minnis says he was “just a dumb football coach” when he and Wilson had the idea of starting a league for kids. Minnis, who played running back at Brooklyn Tech, was coaching at Kips Bay, but says he soured on the politics there, and chose to start his own youth football initiative.
He said that while working as a caterer at American Express, he was already designing jerseys and imagining himself as a coach. Then one day, he took his younger brother to a football camp he says was so shoddily organized, “I said what the hell is this?” That drove him to start Moving the Chains.
Minnis says he gets impatient hearing other adults complaining about kids.
“I’m not just sitting on the street corner with a beer in my hand, saying, ‘these kids are crazy,’” and added, “We want to get the kids to think bigger.”
Last year, local high school students as old as 18 were accepted, but the older children weren’t taking the discipline levels seriously enough, often skipping practice, according to Minnis, so the age limit was shaved to 14 this year. The older adolescents wanted “to look good for the girls,” he recalled with a chuckle. “That’s not how it works.”
Children who play on one of the teams (all four teams are named the Chargers) are required to maintain a minimum 80 average in school. If not, they must be tutored to bring their grades up.
Minnis pays close attention to the Department of Education website to see when report cards are to be issued, then demands his players bring them in.
“Okay,” he tells them, “report card tomorrow. You don’t have it, you don’t play.”
Along with office space, the Chargers are looking for an improved practice field. Currently they practice on Kelly Field, which suffers from gopher-hole sized craters and uneven terrain.
“We’re trying to serve kids without services, without programs,” said Monique Shepherd, 27, a Hunts Point resident who plays safety and linebacker for the semipro New York Sharks, and also coaches the Chargers. “We’re not asking for much. We’re asking for one football field in the South Bronx,” said Shepherd, who noted that baseball fields are abundant.
Last year the team traveled to Florida in two vans to compete with other youth teams from around the country, and although they won only one game, the players are stoked to get another chance this year, according to Minnis.
The rise to local respectability is slow but sure. Minnis and Wilson recruit in local schools, conducting coaching clinics, and their recruiting methods are growing more sophisticated.
“We used to stand around on Southern Boulevard, Westchester Avenue steet corners, handing out flyers,” Minnis recalled with a laugh. “Now we have those nice postcards, laminated.”