NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

With­in the quaint south­ern com­mu­ni­ty of Gon­za­les Vil­lage, Guapo, is a team that’s been nur­tur­ing and de­vel­op­ing young foot­ballers for over two decades. Up­ris­ing Youths Foot­ball Club and Acad­e­my con­tin­ues to make its mark not just in its com­mu­ni­ty, but across the coun­try.

Youth foot­ball be­gan a ma­jor takeover in the vil­lage around the 1980s, with the name Up­ris­ing stem­ming as far back as then. But af­ter a 13-year lull from 1988-2001, now head coach Shel­don Mitchell and some oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty de­cid­ed it was time to re­vamp it.

“Our friend Pe­ter (Agard) bought two foot­balls and just threw them on to the sa­van­nah (Guapo Recre­ation­al Ground),” he re­called. “A lot of peo­ple were lim­ing around and we end­ed up us­ing the en­tire field to play a match—it was 23 men on a team. That was to tell you how many peo­ple want­ed to play foot­ball.”

Mitchell, who is al­so the fa­ther of lo­cal foot­baller Jabari Mitchell, then made every­one gath­er in a cir­cle, re­mind­ing them that there was too much foot­balling tal­ent in Gon­za­les to go to waste. “I told them, ‘We could start back from right here,’ and the fol­low­ing day they came out to train, then the next day and the next day…”

They coined the name Sa­van­nah Boys for the team and ven­tured to the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SFA) to of­fi­cial­ly join its tour­na­ment in both the ju­nior and se­nior di­vi­sions. They had no cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, but hope and good­will fu­elled their en­deav­ours.

They were a force to be reck­oned with in the Guapo and South­ern Foot­ball leagues, and have had sev­er­al ma­jor wins over the years in both the ju­nior and se­nior cat­e­gories.

In fact, they have over 60 tro­phies in their name—from Re­pub­lic Cups and Granville Leagues to Sport Min­istry com­pe­ti­tions and SFA Youth Team of the Year.

In more re­cent years, the team was crowned the De­porti­vo Point Fortin Com­mu­ni­ty Foot­ball League (CFL) cham­pi­ons in 2019 and 2022, and placed sec­ond in 2024 and this year. They al­so won the 2025 West Penn Is­land-Wide Com­mu­ni­ty Youth Foot­ball Tour­na­ment (Un­der-21).

Mitchell said Up­ris­ing is ac­tu­al­ly his sec­ond coach­ing stint, re­call­ing pre­vi­ous­ly coach­ing an un­der-16 team when he was 19. Laugh­ing, he said, “That didn’t last too long but I got some good ex­pe­ri­ence.”

He al­so played un­der vet­er­an youth foot­ball coach Michael “Mikey” Lam­bert up to the un­der-18 age group as a for­ward. But when the pre­vi­ous it­er­a­tion of Up­ris­ing was still around, he would go al­most every­where with them, ob­serv­ing and tak­ing notes in the hope that he could some­day coach such a team. “I was al­most what they would call their biggest fan. I was al­ways there help­ing out and look­ing on,” he re­called.

The team has pro­duced many tal­ent­ed foot­ballers, in­clud­ing some who have had in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess, like Mar­cus Joseph and Hugh­tun Hec­tor, among oth­ers.

Mitchell said the jour­ney has been great and he’s ex­treme­ly proud “to be do­ing it and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in a child’s life through sport.” He con­tin­ued, “I’ve been able to change a lot of lives, even though it may not have been in­stant at all times.”

Elab­o­rat­ing on this point, he said many would come back to him in adult­hood and thank him for men­tor­ing them and lead­ing them down the right path.

“It’s such a joy to see the peo­ple you coach go on so­cial me­dia and say they re­mem­ber lessons you taught them since they were a child. They would say it stuck with them and just say, ‘Coach­man, what you was telling me was true, you know. I just didn’t un­der­stand it ful­ly at the time.”

The acad­e­my cur­rent­ly trains boys and girls from age five “to any age,” Mitchell said.

He said he is grad­u­al­ly adding more coach­es to the ro­ta­tion as he gets old­er so they can take the man­tle. He added that a lot more chil­dren from out­side of the vil­lage have been join­ing in re­cent years.

The Guapo Vil­lage Coun­cil ex­ec­u­tive said Up­ris­ing has had both a tan­gi­ble and in­tan­gi­ble im­pact in the com­mu­ni­ty over the years.

“They have been giv­ing our young peo­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to show their de­ter­mi­na­tion, dis­ci­pline and tal­ent to the com­mu­ni­ty, to their team and them­selves,” the coun­cil shared with Guardian Me­dia.

It added that the acad­e­my pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for em­ploy­ment, so­cial­i­sa­tion, and in­stils pride in all who are in­volved.

“The work they have done in lob­by­ing for main­te­nance and up­grade of the recre­ation ground, their home and train­ing ground speaks strong­ly of their com­mit­ment to chang­ing lives through sports,” the coun­cil con­clud­ed.

And still, with­out any ma­jor cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, they con­tin­ue to shine.

As he looked on with pride at the youths train­ing on the field on the fi­nal day of a re­cent va­ca­tion train­ing camp, Mitchell thanked all who have chipped in to sup­port out of pock­et over the years. He hopes Guapo Up­ris­ing Youths can con­tin­ue to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ate even more world-class in­di­vid­u­als, on and off the pitch.