Kick, Lead, and Dream By Alexandra Gamble
By Alexandra Gamble
Kick, Lead, and Dream Written, Designed, and Photographed by Alexandra Gamble
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Dedication To My KLD Family:
This book is dedicated to all my fellow coaches at the Kick, Lead, and Dream Soccer Camp. There is no way the camp would be the same without each and every one of you. Your help and tireless dedication is greatly appreciated. Thank you for the best five summers of my life, and let’s try to make it just as good (or even better) than last year. This book is especially dedicated to my brother and the rest of the founders of Kick, Lead, ad Dream because without them there would not be a Kick, Lead, and Dream and my documentary project would not exist.
I love you all.
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Acknowledgements Special Thanks To:
Sonia Nigam and Carlos Quijano for giving me great interviews and plenty of material to work with, Kick, Lead, and Dream for providig me with a fantastic documentary topic, and all of the Freestyle Academy teachers for being such great mentors throught this entire project.
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Table of Contents
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Chapter 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Chapter 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Chapter 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 6
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Foreword When we were first told that we would be doing a documentary unit, a thousand ideas immediately rushed to my head, but then when the time came to decide on one topic, I was stuck. As the due date for our book and research paper quickly approached, I was still yet to decide on a topic. Then it hit me. I knew that I wanted to document the soccer camp I am an active part of, but I was not sure of what I wanted expose about it. The camp for the at-risk youth of Mountain View and Sunnyvale is planned and run by volunteer teens in the local area. Once I thought about what our camp was really about, helping the youth in our community to be in a positive environment, I realized what I wanted to find out about the organization: Why? My underlying question became as simple as that one word. Why do teens give up their valuable summer vacation to volunteer when they get nothing in return? As I began my research, my question began to change slightly. I started to wonder what teens got out of the experience as a whole. As I said earlier, the volunteers are not paid and it is during their summer vacation, so why is it worth it? During the progression of my research, I found that nearly everyone who participates in any form of volunteering comes out of it a stronger and more aware person. Although volunteering is meant to help others, the volunteers are benefitting just as much as the people they serve in the community.
“There’s not one best experience at KLD because I feel like every experience has its own unique impact on me.” ~Sonia Nigam 8
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Introduction
Why are we so happy to give us so much of our time to help other people? I have been volunteering with youth in my community for four years, and still I’m not quite sure of why I do it, or why anyone else does it for that matter. Sure, there are the people who do it for community service hours because their schools require it. But what about the people who don’t need hours for school- the people like me.
In order to figure out the answer to my underlying question, I looked within my own organization: Kick, Lead, and Dream Soccer Camp. This camp was created five years ago with only five coach volunteers and thirty campers. Four years ago when I got involved it was still really small, and last year my friend Sonia Nigam and I took complete control of the whole camp. The extreme amount of work that went into planning and executing it was quite a surprise, but somehow it was all still worthwhile. I found out the perspectives of a camp director and a camper who later became a coach especially helpful in my search for the answer to answer my initial question; however, as I proceeded with my interviews and secondary research, I realized that the reason was not what I expected at all. The real reason people volunteer is because they benefit as much, if not more than the community in which they are volunteering. 10
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Chapter 1 Volunteer hours are required by some high schools and are extremely impressive when put on college resumes. The sad truth behind this is that this incentive to boost your college resume often persuades people to volunteering for the wrong reasons. Although I strongly believe that most people volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, there are the people who volunteer for extremely selfish reasons. As we all know, the competition for going to the best university is extremely stressful and overwhelming, so many high school students will do whatever it takes to give them the upper hand. Because colleges want to admit the most well rounded students who want to help improve the world, community service hours will often put one applicant slightly above another with the exact same grade point average and test scores. In an article written in 2000, it was said that “last year was the most competitive college-application derby in the nation’s history, and that trend is expected to accelerate over the next ten years� (Brenna). Now here we are, more than ten years later and that prediction came true. College-applications have become increasingly competitive T, and thus, increasingly more stressful. The extreme amount of pressure put on high school students to go to the best school so they can make the most money possible forces students to stack their resumes with anything and everything they can. This increased competitivity only forces kids and teenages to become more proactive about enhancing their resumes for when application time rolls around.
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“Water day.. Probably one of the funnest days at camp...just because you do something kind of different from soccer and because it’s water and it’s hot and it kind of just goes together. I don’t know the kids enjoy it a lot and so do the coaches.” ~Carlos Quijano
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At Kick, Lead, and Dream Soccer Camp, the volunteers are rewarded with community service hours, though the amount depends on their place in the hierarchy of the camp (director, leader, or coach), and every year our parent supervisors are asked to sign off on volunteer hours for at least a few of the coaches. Although the goal of the camp and organization is to only recruit coach volunteers who honestly want to help the kids and do not even think about boosting their resume, it is almost inevitable that some people like that will come our way. Generally speaking though, these types of volunteers don’t continue to volunteer after they have gotten what they want. After they have fulfilled their school requirements or feel they have enough hours to push them in front of the other applicants for college, they will not return. I’m not saying what they are doing is a bad thing because in the end they are still benefitting the community; however, they are doing it for the wrong reasons, and do not benefit from the experience as intensely.
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Chapter 2
With over two hundred and fifty kids from Sunnyvale and Mountain View, it would be nearly impossible to deeply impact each individual participant; however, the positive experience can really inspire some of the kids to persevere through all the awful circumstances they are exposed to.
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During an interview with the ABC local news, a camper turned coach proved it to be extremely beneficial for the kids also. The coach reflected back on his experience as a camper and told reporter Karina Rusk that all it took was “One quick decision, just sign a paper, come to camp, and it can change everything like it did for me” (Quijano). Although “a numerous amount won’t be fully impacted by KLD...the few [they] do help are the ones that really count” (Nigam). At the camp, guest speakers who the organizers feel will inspire the campers come to visit and talk to the kids. One year the Mountain View High School football coach visited Kick, Lead, and Dream. He grew up with a drug addict as a mother and a convict as a father, and after he spoke to the kids about his situation growing up, they were inspired. “A kid came up to me and said, ‘Sonia, my mom does drugs too and my father is in prison’... I told him that he should use that as an inspiration and he can do better also and he said, ‘that was a great thing for me. Thank you so much for helping me’ ” (Nigam). As conceded earlier, this camp and volunteering in other ways will not impact the entire group; however, this one kid will not grow up and be in a gang. He will not become a crack addict with no future. After realizing that he can do better than his parents, his future seems a little brighter than it did before.
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Chapter 3 When I first began volunteering, I didn’t exactly realize that I was volunteering. After I was exposed to the Kick, Lead, and Dream program during its first year, I just knew I wanted to participate because it seemed like an all around good experience. During our interview, I asked Sonia Nigam why she participates in KLD knowing there are no material benefits. Nigam’s response was what solidified my argument. “You get a lot of emotional and inner benefits from it.” To her it isn’t about getting a summer job to make money. Instead she spends her summer helping others because in reality it also benefits her (Nigam).
Admittedly, being a coach or a leader of this camp is a lot of work, and as a camper you are given a lot more freedom; however, the impact being a coach leaves on you lasts a lifetime. “There’s not one best experience at KLD because I feel like every experience has its own unique impact of me” (Nigam). Working with and being in charge of a team of kids for three hours a day may seem like a challenge, but the benefits outweigh the difficulties and frustrations by at least a mile. Being a coach instills strong leadership skills as well as self-confidence because its hard to believe that a group of teenagers can do so much (Quijano). So yes, it is hard work and sometimes there are setbacks, but the extreme amount of growth you experience as a person makes it all worthwhile. As a coach, you learn an amazing amount of extremely important life skills. “You learn how to become more responsible and put the kids kind of before you” (Quijano). The things that you learn and the extreme growth you experience as a person can really inspire you to move forward and do great things. Even if you don’t plan on pursuing community service as a career or a life choice, it makes you grow as a person and that alone is enough reward for all the hard work and preparation that goes into it. 22
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Conclusion Volunteering may seem like a pain or like it won’t help you personally, but after examining the facts, that is completely false. Of course you impact the youth (or elderly or whoever else) you are volunteering with, but the real truth behind volunteering is that it benefits the volunteers just as much or more than the community. Although there are many ways in which people can volunteer, programs such as Kick, Lead, and Dream Soccer Camp are very unique. Youth leaders coach kids not only in soccer, but in making good life choices. Through this though, they not only help kids make good choices, but also inspire themselves to make the best life choices in order to be the best role models possible for the young kids which they mentor. As unbelievable as it may be, the loads of responsibility placed on the volunteers is not just unneeded pressure; it is a chance for the coaches to prove that there is something they can do to make a difference in their community. The people who volunteer in order to stack their resumes for the intense college application process that looms in the near future will still benefit from the experience; however, they will not grow as a person to the extent that others do.
“One time there was a speaker that came and he was actually the Mountain View Football coach and he talked about his home life and how when he was young his mother did drugs and his father was in prison and after that a kid came up to me and he said ‘Sonia, my mom does drugs too and my father is in prison’ and I was like ‘okayy,’ but I told him that he should use that as an inspiration and he can do better also and he said, ‘that was a great thing for me. Thank you so much for helping me.’ ” ~Sonia Nigam 26
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Works Cited “College Pressures.” Gale Databases. 27 Feb. 2000. <http://www.go.galegroup.com>. Nigam, Sonia. Personal Interview. 29 Feb. 2012. Quijano, Carlos. Personal Interview. 29 March. 2012. Rusk, Karina. “Sunnyvale Soccer Program Booms in Popularity.” ABC7 Local News. 13 July. 2011. 17 Feb. 2012. <http://www.abclocal.go.com>
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