THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
DANVILLE — A community football program is a lot more than just football.
It’s providing youths in Danville with positive role models and a chance to learn and improve their football skills at a young age.
A former football player himself at Bismarck, and now a dad and a barber owning Rodriguez Cuts on Logan Avenue in Danville, Eric Rodriguez, 28, is vice president with the Danville Chargers youth football program.
Michael Hardin is the president of the program. He’s been running it for about 13 years.
“They do cheerleading and wrestling. It’s more than just football over there,” Rodriguez said.
Katrina Shaw runs the cheerleading part of the program.
“It’s a pretty good program on both sides now,” Rodriguez said.
Football practices started this week at Douglas Park for the young players, kindergarten through eighth grade.
Their first home game will be Aug. 25.
They play in the Champaign league, playing other Danville teams and elsewhere, traveling to Champaign, Urbana, St. Joseph, Rantoul and Decatur.
In addition to the Chargers, there also are the Danville Saints that play at Schlarman Academy and the Danville Seahawks play at Garfield Park. They are the same grades and involve a lot of volunteers and families with the nonprofit organizations.
“I guess you can consider it a traveling team,” Rodriguez said.
The Chargers team is co-ed, with a couple girls joining the boys on the teams.
This will be Rodriguez’s son Elias’ first year, at age 5.
There are about 20 kids with each of the four levels of teams, about 80-90 in all.
“That’s more than we’ve had in a while,” Rodriguez said. “I just came over there this year, but I remember the numbers just being very low. Last year we couldn’t even put a team towards playoffs because we didn’t have enough. So, we had to forfeit games. But this year, a lot of kids have come out and a lot more newer coaches, and newer parents. It’s getting a lot better.”
The team practices and has home games on Sundays at Douglas Park. Games start at 11 a.m. They end about 5 p.m. or 6.
The volunteers paint the fields in the grass at the park. They are hoping the city helps with a legit-sized field. There are field goal posts, and they run a scoreboard.
It’s a good spotlight for the players, Rodriguez said.
“We try to find those kids who seem to not want to do the right thing. We’ll be at the park, and there’s kids playing on the playground or playing basketball and just looking over and we’ll go talk to them and try to get them to play or see what they’re thinking,” he said. “Some of them like to be free and not play, but we just still try to see if they’re being good while they’re at the park. We still supervise and make sure everyone at the park’s taken care of.”
“As long as we do our part as coaches, make sure it’s more about the kids then ourselves. They’re reliving our dreams. It’s more about them than us now,” Rodriguez said.
The odds of making it in football or basketball are tough.
“It’s more being a father figure to some of these kids…,” he said.
He said a lot of these kids need the support, such as that kid who gets picked last in activities.
Rodriguez said those involved with the organization can set a good standard for the parents and players. Some children can get dropped off at the park. The children can get left behind, and the program coaches and volunteers are trying to change that by encouraging parents to stay and watch their children.
“It helps them, (and) helps us,” Rodriguez said, adding that he wants a good future for his son.
The talent in Danville can be showcased, he said.
A fundraiser for the Chargers’ football players and cheerleaders is at 11 a.m. Aug. 9 at Douglas Park in Danville. There will be catfish dinners/rib tip dinners with cake and pop for $12.
FOR COMPLETE ACCESS TO NEWS-GAZETTE STORY PLEASE GO TO https://www.news-gazette.com/news/danville-youth-football-program-providing-positive-role-models-helping-with-skills/article_467c4782-4f42-11ef-8040-23ef57409f3f.html
