Soccer Kicks AIDS
From The Valley News
by: Bruce Wood
The easy thing, Norwich’s Alex Kahan admitted, would have been to just sit down and write a check.
Grassroot Soccer, a program that taps the enormous influence of high-profile African soccer players to educate at-risk youth in Zimbabwe about the AIDS and HIV epidemic taking such a horrific toll on their part of the world, could certainly use the money.
Although the organization started by former Hanover High School and Dartmouth soccer standout Tommy Clark during his medical residency a couple of years ago received a Gates Foundation grant for 1993, every dollar is important to Grassroot Soccer.
It took Kahan’s son Jory — a Hanover sophomore encouraged to think about community service by high school science teacher/soccer coach Chris Cheney — to remind his father that money is only part of the answer.
“One day Jory came to me,” Kahan recalled, “and he said, ‘Grassroot Soccer is great, Dad, but it’s all in Africa and to a lot of kids that doesn’t mean anything, because it’s so far away. What if there was a program where kids in this country could learn about what’s going on in Africa through playing soccer?’ ”
As the founder and president of Norwich’s Nomad Communications, Alex Kahan is a pretty good idea guy. This time, however, he took a back seat to his son.
“Jory said, ‘Why don’t we have kids juggle, get pledges and raise money to help Grassroot Soccer?’ ” Kahan said. “It’s such a simple idea, but really clever.
“He said he had no idea how to do it, but fortunately, I’m in the business of marketing and advertising. I said, ‘You’ve got the idea. I’ll take it from here.’ ”
The result: Kick AIDS, a soccer juggling fund-raiser that began this year in the Upper Valley and in Albuquerque, N.M. Piggybacking on the enormous popularity and national profile of Tommy Clark’s father — former Dartmouth and Stanford coach Bobby Clark, now at Notre Dame — Kahan hopes to introduce the program to 550 teams and upwards of 10,000 young soccer players around the country by next fall.
“We decided we’d test-pilot it this year in a friendly environment, Hanover, N.H., and New Mexico, where Tommy is,” said Kahan. “Here was a chance for kids in the Upper Valley to think not just of themselves, but about what is going on in the world.
“With the help of Chris Cheney and Rob Grabill, two of the most energetic soccer people who really get the community service, we got the program going. And it wasn’t just in Hanover. The Lebanon varsity boys and coach Rob Johnstone were wonderful. So were Steve Sass from the Hartford boys, the U-13 and U-14 Lightning teams. The 7th-8th Hanover girls team. My 7th-8th grade boys team.”
Although Kick AIDS will soon begin recruiting “ambassadors” to visit with soccer leagues around New England and in other parts of the country, Alex Kahan made the initial pitch to Upper Valley teams himself.
“I’d say, ‘Guys, I’m here to talk to you about AIDS,’ ” Kahan said. “I could just see them thinking, ‘Not another health class.’ The goal was to make it realistic to them, because if you are 13 or 14 or a high school kid, it’s hard to understand because the numbers are so staggering. So I told them that of the kids their age in Zimbabwe, one-third of them probably will not live to be 30 years old.
“Then I’d ask them, ‘Who plays in the midfield?’ Four of them would raise their hands. I’d take three of them and then move away, ‘because by the time you are in your 30s, you’ll be the only ones left.’ What’s amazing is, they got it. They were listening.”
Johnstone, the Lebanon coach, noticed.
“Unlike sometimes when I’m talking to my guys and they might be staring across the street, they all tuned right in,” he said. “Seeing it in that context, having your friends or peers in a group and then taking one out, it really hit home.”
With local businesses, friends and relatives pledging a certain amount for each successful juggle, Upper Valley teams taking part in the Kick AIDS program raised $7,000 to support Grassroot Soccer. Sweetening the pot: Participants would receive a donated Kappa warmup jacket for raising $100 and a Grassroot Soccer T-shirt for raising $25. The individual who raised the most money would get a signed MLS jersey and the team that raised the most money would get a visit from an MLS player.
The Upper Valley’s individual champions were invited to compete in a juggle-off at halftime of the Dartmouth-Cornell men’s soccer match while the top jugglers in Albuquerque got to show their stuff before a packed crowd at halftime of a University of New Mexico game.
“This absolutely has a chance to catch on big,” said Johnstone. “Juggling is something every soccer player loves to do. Throw in the competitive aspect of seeing who is the best in your group and it’s fun for the kids. I’m hoping it’s an annual thing. This year we had a decent response, but I know we can do a lot better.”
With much-valued direction from Grassroot Soccer managing director Kirk Friedrich of South Pomfret, Kahan and his company are ready to take the pilot program national in 2004.
“Nomad’s responsibility is to implement Kick AIDS,” he said. “It’s an enormous amount of work, and we are pouring our heart and soul into it. But I’d much rather do this than write a single check. If you listen for 10 minutes and unless you are completely callous or out to lunch, you are going to say: ‘Whoa. I’ve got to help somehow.’
“Hopefully this helps kids to understand what’s going on, and maybe someday they’ll have an impact on policy. That’s maybe the most important thing.”
Tommy Clark, selected last month as a 2004 Sports Ethics Fellow by the Institute for International Sport for his work developing the Grassroot Soccer concept, is glad Kahan and his many friends back in the Upper Valley decided to join the effort.
“To really make a dent in this enormous problem we need to expand our program to reach millions, not thousands of African kids,” said Clark, who lived in Zimbabwe before moving to the Upper Valley and still refers to Hanover as home. “American kids, by juggling their soccer balls, collecting pledges and participating in Kick AIDS, can be the driving force behind Grassroot Soccer.
“(It’s) American kids helping African kids playing the sport they both love — soccer.”