Inner City Soccer's mission of inclusivity, accessibility to find home in Sherbondy Hill

Emmanuel Sese works swiftly to interlock the white metal poles in the parking lot of Hardesty Park, pulling the net taut and propping it on the curb.

The thumps of sneakers on soccer balls and giggles of children float through humid evening air as Sese jogs across the grassy field, fidgeting with the small goals while young players dart past him.

He has gotten pretty used to this process over the past decade: the 22-year-old first began playing with Inner City Soccer when he was an 8-year-old boy who had just moved to Akron from Nigeria. Now, Sese volunteers as a coach to “give back to the program that gave me so much.”

It’s June 13, the first day of Inner City Soccer’s free summer camp: four free, weeklong sessions hosted at parks throughout the city.

Soon, these days of makeshift nets and eyeballing proper field size will be a thing of the past. After nearly 23 years of operation, the nonprofit soccer club will finally have a field to call home in Sherbondy Hill.

A vision for a diverse and accessible soccer program

When Dele Olabisi’s son first asked to play soccer, he was thrilled. Olabisi grew up playing the game back home in Nigeria, and he was ecstatic to pass his love for the sport along to his son in Akron.

Olabisi signed him up for a youth soccer program at the YMCA, but quickly realized that his son stood out.

“What I saw there, I wasn't pleased,” Olabisi recalled. “I saw that he was the only Black child in the program at that time.”

Olabisi began looking into why young Black boys aren’t playing soccer at the same rate as white children, particularly in inner cities. What he found was astronomical costs associated with the sport. Similar to other team sports, there are equipment costs such as cleats and jerseys, but the real expenses in soccer are associated with joining a club, which can cost between $2,500 to $5,000 per year, not including travel or registration fees.

“I thought to myself, 'I play soccer, why don't I make [a club] for Akron inner city children?'” Olabisi said. “It would be a nonprofit. We could make it fun. I have the coaches. My son was so excited.”

So in September 1999, he did just that, launching Inner City Soccer. Olabisi and several friends from his former classmates from the University of Akron banded together to begin coaching teams to local youth at an affordable cost.

In the 23 years since, the camp has expanded its program significantly, serving nearly 600 kids annually.

The soccer club, which had seven teams of at least 12 kids last season and competes in tournaments across the state. The cost to join the club is $40 per child per fall or spring season plus $35 for uniforms that last two to three years, but Olabisi will help cover the costs for families who cannot afford to pay.

In addition to the club, Inner City Soccer also runs free summer camps throughout the city for four weeks, teaching the basics of the sport to kids ages five to 15. The kids also receive free t-shirts and daily meals. Each week, the program, which runs 6 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, moves to a new park, beginning June 13 at Hardesty Park in Wallhaven.

Other stops include Mason Park Community Center on the east side, Jennings Middle School in North Hill and Summit Lake Community Center in south Akron.

“The kids come from all over,” Olabisi said. “We want to include all the kids we can, so we go to neighborhoods where kids without transportation can walk and participate.”

A new home for the program

Inner City Soccer has never had a space of its own for its more than two decades of operation, operating out of nearly every park across the city.

“Without a field, we don’t have measurements of the fields with lines or permanent goals,” Olabisi said. “Because of that, we are at a disadvantage of developing skills.”

That will change in the upcoming year. In September, Akron City Council voted to convert Lane Fields, located at 519-543 Howe St., from baseball diamonds to regulation-size soccer fields, an endeavor that will likely be available for the 2023 season. Once complete, Inner City Soccer will move all their programming to those fields.

“That's going to be a blessing for our club, a blessing for the children of the community, a blessing for all the ones who will play for years to come,” Olabisi said.

Olabisi's vision realized, with more to come

Many of the league’s participants, similar to Olabisi, are immigrants, refugees or people of color: a mark of success for his vision of inclusivity and accessibility when he first founded the league.

“This program is a blessing to refugee kids: Asian refugees, African refugees,” Olabisi said. “All the children that might not have otherwise had a chance to play.”

One of those children was Sese, the now-22-year-old who volunteers his time as a coach. When he was 8, just a year after emigrating from Africa, Sese began playing soccer under Olabisi, who he said is “like my dad now.”

“When you first come from Africa, meeting people who you can talk to who know your language, where you can meet new friends and things like that, that really helped me out,” Sese said.

Sese said their reach far exceeds the work on the field: For kids whose parents are absent or cannot pledge to the time commitment, coaches will drive them to and from practice, buy them meals and call college coaches to come out and watch them play.

“I just want to do good for them,” Sese said. “They don’t got a lot of opportunities. We want to help them find a way out of whatever situation they may be in so they can be better for themselves.”

Olabisi now relies on dedicated volunteer coaches like Sese to run the program after suffering a stroke in December that affected his speech and mobility — he now uses a walker or wheelchair. But that won’t stop him from missing camp: On the first day of the summer program, he’s sitting in a car in Hardesty Park’s lot with a smile on his face, watching the next generation of soccer players learn to dribble.

This story is part of the Akron Beacon Journal’s mobile newsroom, currently located at the Odom Boulevard Library branch in Sherbondy Hill. 

Reporter Abbey Marshall is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Learn more at reportforamerica.org. Contact her at at amarshall1@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Inner City Soccer establishing permanent home in Sherbondy Hill