{"id":7496,"date":"2018-05-27T13:46:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T13:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/29\/soccer-a-universal-language\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:02:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:02:30","slug":"soccer-a-universal-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/soccer-a-universal-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Soccer\u2014a universal language"},"content":{"rendered":"

When choosing among spring break options, few college sophomores are likely to sign up for a week of manual labor, icy showers and playing with schoolchildren who don\u2019t speak English in a country still reeling from a massive earthquake.<\/p>\n

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Team Haiti working at one of the orphanages near Port-au-Prince.<\/p><\/div>\n

But for 10 Furman men\u2019s soccer players, the choice to spend their March break near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, serving at orphanages was clear. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s hard to give up a spring break, but once we decided to do it, we were all in,\u201d said business major Cole McLagan.<\/p>\n

The plan had been brewing for a couple of years through Furman head coach Doug Allison\u2019s association with trip organizer and friend Rick Slagle, a \u201cfather figure\u201d for the team. A previous mission to Mexico involving former player Marco Ortiz \u201916 had fueled the idea to take a trip as a team.<\/p>\n

So with commitment from Team Haiti, Slagle and Jeff Coppins, development director at Back2Back Ministries, the group began to make the trip a reality. Business and accounting major John Branisa and Jeffrey Fann (health sciences) did their part by successfully raising $1,800 per person through a letter-writing campaign to alumni, friends and family.<\/p>\n

On the island of Hispaniola, the team worked with Harvest Care Children\u2019s Home and another local orphanage where virtually all the children\u2019s parents perished in the devastating January 2010 quake.<\/p>\n

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The team visited a hillside memorial for the 2010 earthquake where 125,000 Haitians are buried in mass graves.<\/p><\/div>\n

The magnitude 7.0 quake was the strongest to hit the region in over 200 years. Claiming upward of 300,000 lives and displacing another 1.5 million people, the temblor reduced to rubble homes, schools, hospitals and government buildings.<\/p>\n

Chaperoned by Slagle, Coppins and a third soccer friend, BJ Flora, the Furman team spent the first part of the day on projects like breaking up large rocks with sledge hammers and pick axes to create a pathway. They also worked on a foundation for a chapel and built a clean water system for one of the facilities.<\/p>\n

Then, mustering even more energy and strength, the team spent the latter half of each day building other things\u2014like relationships.<\/p>\n

Said Fann, \u201cThe person who grabbed my hand in the beginning became my best friend\u2014no matter what I was doing, he was right behind me playing soccer, jump-in, jump-out and other games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many children communicated with the team members through the power of touch. Despite the language hurdle (Haitian Creole), unspoken messages of support were delivered through service, soccer, eye contact and the simple act of holding a child\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Physics and applied math major Max Fisher said the highlight of his week was being called \u201cPwason,\u201d Haitian Creole for his nickname, \u201cfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The young men spoke about the \u201cuniversal language\u201d that is soccer. Business major Emery May recounts time he spent with Stanley. \u201cIt was cool to see how the game of soccer can help create a relationship. He would grab one of the balls we brought and start kicking it around with us. He could play all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Team members and children at local orphanages became fast friends.<\/p><\/div>\n

What surprised politics and international affairs major Conor Sloan was how much the mission changed him. \u201cIn America we tend to associate happiness with the attainment of materialistic things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the older boys, Diackenson, brought out a pair of shoes to play soccer with us on a gravel field. Instead of putting both shoes on, he shared one with another barefooted child. Diackenson didn\u2019t need the shoes for happiness, he just needed his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

For health sciences major Sean Langan, the impact of the trip was \u201cprofound.\u201d He said, \u201cThe thing that stood out for me was how happy and generous the kids were. They had very little, but they made sure all the team members had fresh coconuts and they didn\u2019t take any for themselves. We went to serve them, but they ended up giving back to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, politics and international affairs major Connor Hubbard said the problems in Haiti appeared insurmountable until he witnessed things up close. \u201cI was overwhelmed with how helpless it seemed. But when we saw the orphanages, it was cool to see God\u2019s light shine in those little kids\u2019 faces. Ministries like Back2Back really do make a difference in individual lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for returning to Haiti, the invitation from Back2Back is open. Said Coppins, \u201cI would take these boys back any day of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coppins, a longtime friend of Furman soccer, applauds Allison\u2019s philosophy. \u201cIt\u2019s way more than soccer and wins and losses for Doug. He wants to develop young men who will go out and make an impact on the world. It\u2019s about building a program with kids who come through it with character. That means something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When choosing among spring break options, few college sophomores are likely to sign up for a week of manual labor, icy showers and playing with schoolchildren who don\u2019t speak English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":7497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,20,21,50,49,32,61,30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-business-and-accounting","category-health-sciences","category-mathematics","category-physics","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}