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BEHIND THE STRIPES

Sean David

By Atlanta United FC

November 27^th, 2019

For Sean David, soccer was an early memory in his life –– and it was a family affair.

“I’ll never forget getting a breakaway and my mom running up the sidelines with me,” he says through laughter. “I’m like 12, peak parent embarrassment age, and my mom is running stride for stride with me and screaming the whole way.”

The memories and lessons he learned there would last a lifetime. There was a core group of players he played with throughout his youth, who became good friends. But he drifted away from the game, taking the time to focus on his budding career in art and teaching. But it was his step into teaching that got him back into the beautiful game.

“Coaching is what got me back,” he says. “I always watched games, but I didn’t play for years, but I started coaching a middle school team, and that’s when I started really itching to play again. When I saw the Station Soccer field that Soccer in the Streets and Atlanta United built at the Five Points Marta Station, I looked them up right away to be a coach. That idea was so amazing to me. To build a field at the train station make so much sense. Maybe it wasn’t obvious before, but now it’s like, ‘why haven’t we been doing this all along?’”

Soccer in the Streets is a program Atlanta United has worked in partnership for years, tackling one of the club’s primary goals in growing the grassroots game across Atlanta. Sean is playing a major part in that, rising from coach to manager of all programs on the Westside, bringing soccer to some of Atlanta’s most poverty-stricken areas.

“The Westside is an area that is going to have a lot going on,” he says. “We already have more than 200 kids signed up for programs over there this last season. There’s so much momentum with soccer in America right now but especially in Atlanta, with Atlanta United doing so well. I like to think what we are doing is contributing to that.”

The Westside became the second train station soccer pitch last year, but when plans began for a third pitch for 2019 –– this one in East Point –– there was no one better to help design the new space. A professional artist himself, Sean got the opportunity to paint the giant mural that looks over the new pitch.

“The message is one of freedom that I’ve felt when I played soccer, represented by the birds,” he says, “but also unity. Something that’s always resonated with me with Atlanta United is their commitment to unifying the city. So you have one scarf around the a black girl and a latino boy, and the scarf says ‘umoja,’ which means unity in Swahili, and ‘unidos’ which is united in Spanish. There are so many cultures in Atlanta, and soccer can bring them all together in a unique way. That’s really powerful.”

There is a technical reason to increase the access to soccer in Atlanta and across the country, with more opportunities leading to better players on the field. But Sean is more interested in the effect the game has outside of the pitch.

“I’ve had a lot more experience as a teacher than a coach,” he says, “and I used to coach my own students. But when I leave the classroom and come out on that pitch, the level of respect you get, just the openness to the lessons you’re trying to teach as a coach is just a whole other level to what you get as a teacher. It’s a different connection, a whole different relationship.

“It’s really such an important opportunity for me,” he continued, “the lessons you can teach as a coach as far as character development are just amazing. I’ve been doing youth work since I was young myself, it’s part of my life purpose. So to attack it from this angle coaching, to see how impactful I can be is something that’s really rewarding.”

Sean is quick to point out that the success of Atlanta United is no small factor in the rise of soccer in Georgia and the South, saying it gives kids something to aspire to, something that’s existed for other sports for a long time but hasn’t existed for soccer players in the area until recently.

“There’s just so much energy at the matches,” he says. “Soccer games in general are just amazing sports events, with the singing, the chants, the crowd participation. It’s impossible to not to just be wowed by the stadium when you walk in. What surprised me to was just how there’s no bad view. I’ve watched games in the nosebleeds and it’s great up there, watching the game but also the chants and everything. When a goal scores and you see the supporters’ section and whole stadium erupt, I just love it.

With three pitches now built in partnership between Atlanta United, MARTA and Soccer in the Streets –– and several more planned –– the game is growing at an incredible rate all across the city, both at the professional and grassroots level. But there’s still so much more room to grow, and it is, thanks in no small part to people like Sean who are nurturing those seeds to keep the game blossoming in Atlanta.

“Just knowing how much soccer meant to me as a child and what I got out of it growing up, it’s so important to me personally,” he says. “I’d like to see kids interact with soccer the way kids interact with basketball: you don’t have to organize it, you don’t have to tell kids to go anywhere to play. If there’s not a court, they’ll string a milk crate to a tree and make it happen. We’re getting closer, but we’re not quite there yet. In five years in this city, I’d love to see the youth thirsty to play, they’re initiating games and organizing themselves. It’ll come. And I’d like to think Soccer in the Streets and Atlanta United are a catalyst for making that happen.”

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