Communities all across America often come together to help the less fortunate. Wednesday night at Walt Hundley Playfield was in many ways typical of how that works.
The Highline Premier Football Club (HPFC), an organization dedicated to youth soccer held its first ever "Fill the Goal" food drive, asking people to donate food to the West Seattle Food Bank. Normally of course the volume of donations swells around the holidays but people are hungry all year so efforts like this make a big difference in meeting the need.
The members of the club visited the food bank and even went to the headquarters of regional food distributor Food Lifeline near South Park to see their remarkable and city wide effort.
But the lessons learned there and food collected Wednesday were about far more than helping the less fortunate. Club President Jessica Pierce said, "These kids learn more than just soccer at our non-profit hometown club! I think we could all use some reminders of amazing kids doing service for our community and what they love."
It's her belief that in today's world the news is often toxic, and skewed to the negative. It has the potential to create a world view for children that is not only unhealthy but wrong. The antidote? Give children the outlet for their energy in the form of a soccer program but go further and have that program do good works too. The idea is to show children through positive action that the world is full of good people looking out for each other.
They collected several cars worth of food and it was set to be delivered to the food bank on Thursday evening.
HPFC covers West Seattle, Burien and Des Moines and offers professional trainers, real coaches with sports experience that give children guidance as their soccer skills grow. Their website states that:
- Players train year-round, 2-3 days per week in 1.5 hour sessions
- Comprehensive written evaluations of every player, twice a year
- Skills training through our club academy for players under 14 and younger in two 10 week sessions per year
- Teams face meaningful competition in the Puget Sound Premier League
Soccer, if the recent World Cup matches and rise of interest and participation in women's soccer worldwide is any indication, is becoming America's sport. HPFC is intent on making it not just a sport but a training ground for better people too.
