Nearly every weeknight in the fall, the sounds of little league football echo through the streets surrounding Legion Field in west Pensacola — clashing pads, whistles, cheers — but there’s more going on than just football.
As children outside learn to play football and cheer while getting lessons in discipline and teamwork, some of their parents are inside the Theophilis May Community Center taking a GED class that is put on by the same little league sports program, the Southern Youth Sports Association.
SYSA keeps the May Community Center filled throughout the year with different sports programs that not only provide inner-city children with youth sports opportunities, but also offer tutoring and mentoring that go beyond what most other programs provide.
Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson wants to replicate the success that SYSA has had in sports, but with arts and culture, by bringing in other groups to start youth programs at city community centers.
Nearly 30 years ago, John Chandler couldn’t find a basketball program for his son in Pensacola, so he helped start one.
Initially, it was under the umbrella of the Salvation Army, but as it grew larger and added more teams, it became an independent organization called the Southern Youth Sports Association. Now, the organization fields dozens of teams each year in football, cheerleading, baseball and basketball.
SYSA has mentored several alumni who’ve gotten full athletic scholarships at Division 1 schools and even a few who’ve gone on to the NFL and WNBA, but the program stresses life balance over athletics.
The Rev. James Watson, an SYSA football coach, has been involved with the organization since he was child, like many of the other coaches. Watson said he realizes most of the children who play youth sports likely won’t continue on in high school and beyond, but what they learn will stick with them for the rest of their lives. He’s seen many of the children go on to become doctors, lawyers and teachers.
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“This is the end of their sports career here, but it’s just the beginning of their life,” Watson said. “So we do a lot of instilling that after they leave this field, that they have something tangible to take with them when they leave.”
Kyndall Taylor, a cheerleading coach for the “mites” division, children ages 9-10, is now in college to become a pharmacist, but was involved in SYSA when she was a child and credits the after-school tutoring programming with teaching her the importance of school work.
“It teaches kids it’s OK to play and learn,” said Taylor, who also helps in the tutoring program and teaches an etiquette class that is part of SYSA.
Another long-time coach and board member of SYSA is Escambia County Commission Chairman Lumon May. Theophilis May Community Center is named for May’s father.
“People say at SYSA, y’all put so much emphasis on sports,” May said. “If all we said today, we’re just going to do tutoring, ain’t nobody showing.”
Sports have brought in thousands of children and the program currently has almost 500 volunteers and hosts the Soul Bowl at Blue Wahoos Stadium each year, which is billed as the largest little league football game in the country.
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None of the children have to pay for uniforms or equipment to play as SYSA is funded through donations.
“We couldn’t do it without the city and the facilities,” May said. “Now, we take no government money for programming. Uniforms, staffing, all that, it’s because we got Troy Rafferty. It’s because we got Quint Studer, because we got Shirley Cronley. We’ve got the generosity of this community to be able to provide these programs.”
Across town, Woodland Heights Community Center gets plenty of use by neighborhood children as a basketball gym, but it was not build for that purpose.
Opened in 2013, the community center was meant to give a poor city neighborhood a place for arts and culture.
Woodland Heights Neighborhood Association President Walter Wallace told the News Journal when construction began in 2012 that the neighborhood had high hopes for the center.
“We want a place for our children to develop their artistic skills,” Wallace said in 2012.
But seven years later, Wallace said the community center has yet to live up to its original potential.
For the first time, the city hosted a performing arts night at the center Sept. 18 to gauge interest in different arts organizations. Wallace was there to see how it went.
“It hasn’t lived up to its potential, because the potential was arts and culture,” Wallace said. “That’s what we’re trying to do now, to get that established.
“For me, I live in this neighborhood, I didn’t realize until they built it, how valuable it was for the kids. … The potential for it to be greater is there, so that’s what we’re trying to do tonight to see can we move it up.”
Mayor Robinson believes the city should take a greater role in encouraging successful youth programs like SYSA throughout the city.
During his transition into office last year, Robinson included education as a topic for his transition team to measure and said he got flack for the city looking into education instead of leaving it to the school district.
“We’re not in the education business,” Robinson told the News Journal in an interview in May. “That’s not our job. Some people were critical of me for putting education on the transition team. I think education is vitally critical for our economic development. Everything we do, it’s right there. We may not run it, but we ought to be figuring out how to help.”
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Robinson said he would like to help foster private groups using the SYSA model to develop programs for other areas like choir, drama or even science programs.
“The idea is we have assets, we need to find out how to take our assets and program them with people,” Robinson said.
Woodland Heights has become a focus of the new Robinson administration.
“It was supposed to be dedicated to arts, and we’ve never fulfilled the promise of arts,” Robinson said. “We have a basketball court in there, and we run it like we do every other (community center). We have not really put it the effort to doing arts.”
After meeting with local arts groups over the past few months, the city put together its performing arts night at Woodland Heights that included Blues Angel Music, Pensacola Children’s Chorus, Pensacola Historic Trust, Pensacola Opera, Sonshine/Magic 106.1 and the University of West Florida.
Surveys taken after the meeting had Pensacola Children’s Chorus and Sonshine coming out as the most popular groups from children who attended the event, with singing and dance as the most popular areas.
Robinson said during his press conference Sept. 23 that the night was just a first step.
The city just passed its 2020 budget, but it did not include any money for Robinson’s arts initiative.
He said city employee pay raises took priority, but he is optimistic the city will find funding for more programming in the future, including opening city community centers on Saturdays.
For Chandler at SYSA, there needs to be more than just city commitment; there needs to be volunteers from the community dedicated to the children in the program.
“If they tried to do what we did, they couldn’t do it,” Chandler said. “It would cost an arm and leg.”
Jim Little can be reached at [email protected] and 850-208-9827.