A great work out to go along with a great year of service

Recently, we began playing football on Sunday’s with a lot of random people. We organized the games by telling a few corps members that we were going to play at Clark Park (43rd to 45th on either side of Chester Ave.). Then, they told people. Then those people told people, and it turned into a big recruitment process.

Corps members began playing in January with college, high school and neighborhood teens. Football was a hit (literally). It began to progress every week, which is funny, because we just made up a random place to play.

As a group, we noticed most of the players lived in West Philly. We started telling all the West Philly people to tell their friends and we made announcements at Unity Rally for City Year people to come out.

The games kept getting bigger and bigger and we have a full team that includes linemen, wide receivers, running backs, and a quarterback. It’s a good way to play around with the people that we work with.

Marque, 19, corps member, Eagles Youth Partnership team at Jones Middle School