Building Champions
On & Off the Field

Not long after I moved into my house on the Westside of Buffalo, I was faced with a reality I couldn't ignore. My street — my neighborhood — was struggling. Right across from my home was a house that had become a hub for drug use and everything that comes with it. There's no delicate way to put it. The people who came and went from that house shared the weight of that life in their bodies, the way they walked.

Over time, the faces became familiar. Eventually, I sadly stopped thinking of them as individuals and started seeing them as part of the same sad story — poverty, addiction, neglect, mental illness, struggle. That was, until one day, I saw a new face.

He was young — still a teenager. I could tell he was Sudanese, like some of the kids I had coached before. And that made me stop. Because suddenly, I wasn't just looking at another person caught in this cycle — I was seeing a kid that I felt I knew. I became consumed with a story of how this Sudanese kid on the Westside of Buffalo ended up in this life.

I imagined his parents — surviving the horrors of war and genocide in Darfur, living in the uncertainty of life in a refugee camp, and somehow making their way to America. I imagined the feeling of hope they must have felt when they got the news that they were coming here. The relief. The belief that their kids would have a better chance at life in the USA.

And now, after all of that, here was their son, caught up in something they had fought so hard to escape. This was heartbreaking to me. And it felt unacceptable.

“Kids need support. They need opportunities. They need people who believe in them before they believe in themselves.”

I don't have all the answers on how to solve these problems, but I do feel strongly that kids need support. They need opportunities. They need people who believe in them before they believe in themselves. And for me, that means using what I know — sports — to create something better.

That's why I started Buffalo Sports Project — a free sports program for kids in the City of Buffalo. Focused on the values of mentorship, self-expression and community, leaning on positive people in our community to help guide the next generation.

I don't pretend that a soccer team or a basketball league can fix everything. But I do know that when we show up for these kids — when we invest in them, believe in them, and give them a place where they feel seen — good things can happen.