SCORES Poet-Athletes in San Francisco

SCORES Poet-Athletes in San Francisco

On the Indochinese Housing Development Center (IHDC) SCORES team in the Civic Center region, there is a student at named Fernanda. She is an all star soccer player on the field and you can see and feel her excitement on the field. Fernanda scores lots of goals at Friday Game Days at Civic Center Plaza in front of City Hall in San Francisco.

At one point the IHDC coach made a substitution to have Fernanda take a break. She cheered for her teammates from the sideline as enthusiastically as she played on the field.

It is clear that SCORES provides a fun and engaging opportunity for Fernanda to be a leader, to excel, and to belong in her community. The program and the positive team culture provides Fernanda with a space where she can be brave, be herself, make friends, practice outstanding team spirit, and exercise her leadership skills.

In addition, almost every student on the IHDC SCORES team submitted a poem for the SCORES poetry contest this month! This feels like a huge accomplishment because, due to many factors, doing poetry at IHDC has been challenging in the past. But now the students are writing and expressing themselves creatively, and building enough confidence to submit their poems to a poetry contest. The team is doing really well this season.

There is another student on the IHDC SCORES team named Alexis. At first, Alexis was scared of playing soccer. He was new to the game and intimidated by the older players. At one Game Day this season, the coach asked Alexis if he would like to play goalie (Goalie can be a difficult position in soccer, especially when players from the other team are shooting the ball towards the goal trying to score). The IHDC coach and Coach Amber gave him some encouragement, and Alexis agreed to give it a try. When he was playing goalie for the first time he stopped a shot and got super excited. He was so proud that he did a sweet victory dance right there in the goal. Now Alexis' confidence is growing, he doesn’t feel so scared to play soccer anymore, and he’s thoroughly enjoying being part of the team.

Programs like SCORES give students a supportive space to try new things, learn new skills, and have the opportunity to be acknowledged and celebrated for their accomplishments.