Joshua Seemu­n­gal

For decades, the Mor­vant Recre­ation­al Grounds has been a breed­ing ground for foot­ball tal­ent, pro­vid­ing young men from the com­mu­ni­ty and sur­round­ing ar­eas with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hone their skills.

Many of those young men went on to ex­cel at the Sec­ondary Schools' Foot­ball League (SS­FL) lev­el, the lo­cal pro­fes­sion­al league, for­eign pro­fes­sion­al leagues, and, of course, with the na­tion­al team.

Sean David, Arnold Dwari­ka, Den­nis Lawrence, Ja­son Scot­land, Brent San­cho, Ross Rus­sell, Au­r­tis Whit­ley, Stoke­ly Ma­son, Hay­den Tin­to and Rus­sel Lat­apy, some of the best lo­cal foot­ball tal­ents, are just some of the leg­ends that trained and de­vel­oped their skills at the grounds.

But foot­ball and com­mu­ni­ty life in Mor­vant are not what they used to be.

Res­i­dents claim that more youths are suc­cumb­ing to pover­ty and gang life, and as a re­sult, are not reach­ing their full foot­ball and aca­d­e­m­ic po­ten­tial.

De­spite the nu­mer­ous chal­lenges, an­oth­er one of the com­mu­ni­ty’s most fa­mous foot­balling sons, for­mer na­tion­al team star play­er Nevick De­noon re­fus­es to give up.

The own­er/man­ag­er of Mor­vant El­e­ments knows all too well what foot­ball can of­fer.

It helped him get an ed­u­ca­tion at Hillview Col­lege, then uni­ver­si­ty, be­fore tak­ing him to the De­fence Force. It al­so al­lowed him to trav­el the world play­ing with the Trinidad youth and se­nior foot­ball teams.

“He’s the on­ly man do­ing some­thing with the youths and them be­cause it has plen­ty of them. It has plen­ty of foot­ballers but they go­ing to the gun. The com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and them on so much crap, in­stead of giv­ing them a gun, they not say­ing let me give them a pair of foot­ball boots, or a uni­form to en­cour­age them in some­thing pos­i­tive,” a res­i­dent in his 40s told the Sun­day Guardian.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the Mor­vant Recre­ation­al Grounds re­cent­ly to in­ter­view coach De­noon, it was clear that he was deal­ing with a lot.

While he smiled for the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­ter­view, he oc­ca­sion­al­ly stared blankly in­to space.

In those mo­ments, I imag­ined him re­flect­ing on the mag­ni­tude of the chal­lenges con­fronting his beloved club.

No football boots, so this youngster plays barefooted at the Morvant Recreational Grounds.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

'We need eco­nom­ic sup­port'

Formed in the 1980s, Mor­vant El­e­ments was once the top pro­fes­sion­al team in the coun­try, win­ning di­vi­sion­al ti­tles. De­noon, whose fam­i­ly moved to Mor­vant in 1976, was one of the team’s star play­ers. He has al­so been a se­nior club ex­ec­u­tive since its in­cep­tion.

“We need eco­nom­ic sup­port. We need cor­po­rate peo­ple to come in. For ex­am­ple, things like equip­ment. A par­ent has three chil­dren and can’t af­ford $300 for a pair of boots. Right now it’s sev­er­al is­sues that are bur­den­ing us and the parental sup­port is not there,” De­noon lament­ed while speak­ing at the pavil­ion.

The path­way to the pavil­ion was drenched in wa­ter and moss, cre­at­ing a slip­pery sur­face, while stray dogs and goat fae­ces pop­u­lat­ed the stands.

Small sec­tions of the field’s grass are bro­ken up by large pud­dles of mud sat­u­rat­ed by wa­ter, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for the ball to roll smooth­ly and mak­ing it easy for play­ers to lose their foot­ing.

The ground's lights do not work, lim­it­ing train­ing by Mor­vant El­e­ments and Mal­ick Sec­ondary’s foot­ball teams to day­light.

“We are stig­ma­tised and mar­gin­alised, so the ed­u­ca­tion stan­dard has fall­en bad­ly. And that is one of my great­est con­cerns right now–ed­u­ca­tion. Sim­ple things like timeta­bles, lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy skills have fall­en back. This is the worst I’ve seen since I’ve been in this com­mu­ni­ty. But foot­ball now is the re­sus­ci­ta­tor. Foot­ball is the ve­hi­cle we are us­ing again to re­build,” De­noon said.

“My main is­sue is the de­vel­op­ment of the young­sters who are com­ing from a lot of bro­ken homes. Par­ents un­able to sup­port them­selves. The youths go­ing to pri­ma­ry school can’t even spell or read, and I’m dis­cov­er­ing that when they come to Mor­vant El­e­ments to play.”

Goalposts at Never Dirty Pavilion in Morvant.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

Promis­ing play­ers lost to vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty

Over the years, De­noon has lost sev­er­al promis­ing play­ers to vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

A few years ago, he said, an El­e­ments play­er, James Julien, was killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing while he was on his way to train­ing.

“There aren’t the op­por­tu­ni­ties, or they are not tak­ing ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause they don’t know how. They can’t ac­cess the pos­si­bil­i­ties that are there, ex­cept maybe when they come to the club and we try to guide them. But what you find right now is they are con­trol­ling their homes be­cause mom­my isn’t work­ing and if the son comes home with some food, mom­my not even ask­ing him where he got it from,” De­noon lament­ed.

“Do not rush on­ly when you see the boys get­ting in trou­ble, but rush when he wants to play foot­ball. I mean if the par­ents would rather sit down or go and 'zess', rather than watch the boy play foot­ball on a Sat­ur­day, it’s on­ly go­ing to get worse. Some­thing has to change."

Fol­low­ing our ini­tial in­ter­view with the Mor­vant El­e­ments own­er and coach, we made our way in­to Nev­er Dirty in search of some of his for­mer play­ers.

It was short­ly af­ter mid­day on that par­tic­u­lar day in late No­vem­ber.

Yet, it was rel­a­tive­ly easy to speak with young men near the Nev­er Dirty Pavil­ion and Mul­ti-Pur­pose Court.

At first, I spoke with two boys who play with Mor­vant El­e­ments–one 16 years old, and the oth­er, 15.

I asked them why they were not in school.

“I got in a fight, so I’m not in school right now…I al­so can’t be in foot­ball right now be­cause of dis­ci­pline,” the 16 year old said.

“I just stay home. I go­ing in to­mor­row,” the younger one said un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly.

Since the age of sev­en or eight, both have played foot­ball with coach De­noon.

They dream of mak­ing it far in foot­ball, but it was clear that they lacked con­fi­dence in re­al­is­ing that dream.

“I want to go re­al far in foot­ball. If I get the chance I will go,” the boy, 16, said.

“What could stop you from mak­ing that hap­pen?” I asked.

“Hard work,” he said.

Coach Nevick Denoon’s crocus bag of black beans and rice to be distributed to the players.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

Joseph Ja­cob Nicholls, 18, took time to speak with us near the court as well.

Per­son­able and with a beam­ing smile, the Mor­vant El­e­ments de­fend­er said he was cur­rent­ly in­jured.

He said that foot­ball in the com­mu­ni­ty must heal in or­der for the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole to heal.

“We try all how to bring back foot­ball in the com­mu­ni­ty–to make the com­mu­ni­ty live­ly again, nah. For the chil­dren to come out to play ball. To have fun and not bick­er amongst each oth­er,” Joseph said.

“Coach De­noon has been there. He’s our sergeant. He will nev­er give up, our coach... That’s one thing. He will al­ways be there for us, al­ways be there to train us and show us the good­ness of foot­ball.”

Joseph said his dream was al­so to be a pro­fes­sion­al play­er.

Once he knows how to push him­self, noth­ing can stop him from mak­ing that hap­pen, he said.

“Like I al­ways tell peo­ple, it wouldn’t be easy. It will al­ways be hard. All I could tell you is nev­er give up. Al­ways have faith you will make it out there in this life no mat­ter what. You could be from this com­mu­ni­ty, or you could come from here or there. Al­ways re­mem­ber the place where you re­al­ly come from and al­ways re­mem­ber God will nev­er give up on you,” Joseph added.

Two oth­er for­mer play­ers–Quin­ton and Mark–were work­ing near the court while we were speak­ing with res­i­dents.

They joined in, will­ing­ly, to speak high­ly of foot­ball and De­noon’s con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Sarg has been there for my old­er broth­er, Ron­ny. He’s al­so been there for Kyle. Dad­dy and Sarg played to­geth­er…Foot­ball is a to­geth­er­ness. Some­times you don’t like a boy who you have to play with, but you don’t want to lose, so you work to­geth­er,” Mark, a de­liv­ery truck work­er in his ear­ly 20s, said.

“Foot­ball helped to de­vel­op my char­ac­ter in a pos­i­tive way. Foot­ball has of­fered that to a lot of young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Quin­ton added.

Morvant Elements footballers practicing at the Morvant Recreational Grounds.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL

Par­ents can­not af­ford to buy foot­ball boots

Lat­er in the day, I re­turned to the Recre­ation­al Ground to ob­serve train­ing and meet some of the younger play­ers.

As I ap­proached the pavil­ion, I ob­served coach De­noon speak­ing with the two 14-year-old play­ers.

They had no foot­ball boots, so the coach had to make the tough de­ci­sion of de­cid­ing who would get the last re­main­ing pair of boots that he had.

Yasim (name changed) even­tu­al­ly got them for the day be­cause he came to train­ing first.

Michael (name changed) was not pleased and be­gan to pout.

“But coach, he wear them last time,” Michael said.

To the front row of seats, next to the re­main­ing train­ing equip­ment, were two big cro­cus bags.

One was full of black beans, while the oth­er had white rice.

Be­fore every train­ing ses­sion, De­noon pours some of each in­to lit­tle bags and gives the play­ers to car­ry home.

No­body knows the sto­ries of some of the chil­dren at the club, and few seem to care, De­noon laments.

Out of the group of around 15 play­ers train­ing that day, at least six did not have foot­ball boots.

Their par­ents can­not af­ford to buy them a pair.

One of the club’s most promis­ing play­ers, age 12, is still a cou­ple of years away from writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA).

He dropped out of school for a while, but the coach man­aged to get him back in.

Yasim, who was lucky enough to get the last pair of boots that day, is no longer in school.

Hav­ing dropped out dur­ing COVID, he works the odd day job in con­struc­tion to help his fam­i­ly make ends meet.

One of the 18-year-old play­ers is fa­ther­less–lost to vi­o­lence.

Michael is strug­gling emo­tion­al­ly to deal with a bro­ken home.

His fa­ther has two fam­i­lies–some­thing he just can­not un­der­stand, so he is act­ing out.

Dur­ing the train­ing ses­sion, De­noon pulled aside Michael and an­oth­er youth, 14, train­ing to be a goal­keep­er.

De­noon said he was teach­ing them to shoot and catch, but I want you to hear this.

“Spell catch,” De­noon said to Michael.

“Can’t re­mem­ber, coach,” Michael re­spond­ed.

“Spell catch,” the coach said to the oth­er play­er.

“Can’t re­mem­ber,” the oth­er young­ster said.

De­noon looked at me af­ter the boys walked away and said, “That’s my chal­lenge right now and no one seems to care. If it wasn’t for foot­ball these fel­las would be walk­ing the streets up and down.”

Re­count­ing his own life, he said, “My moth­er, Vi­o­let Williams, is my hero. She worked at Hilton as a wait­ress for 33 years and she taught me every­thing and said I could do any­thing. And foot­ball has giv­en me every­thing be­cause it gave me dis­ci­pline and I think that’s where we are falling back. They are not al­lowed the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Noth­ing is there for them to be part of.”

Be­fore leav­ing the train­ing ground that evening, I spoke with a par­ent of one of the play­ers.

“Mr De­noon is a founder and a builder and an as­set to this com­mu­ni­ty. He is one of the few peo­ple con­tribut­ing to youth de­vel­op­ment in foot­ball. At the end of the day, if you ask most of these guys the sev­en times ta­bles, they will say 1x7=7 and 2x7=14, but then they stop. Mor­vant El­e­ments is not just a foot­ball club, it’s al­so an ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty. He tries his best to ed­u­cate them al­so.”

In June 2021, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 stu­dents dropped out of school since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic.

In the 2022 Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion, more than 9,000 stu­dents scored less than 50 per cent.

Calls to Sport Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe on the is­sue were unan­swered, her phone went straight to voice mes­sage.

How to help the youth foot­ballers

If any­one is in­ter­est­ed in of­fer­ing sup­port, con­tact own­er and man­ag­er Nevick De­noon at 393-4628.

Coach Nevick Denoon, left, speaks with a Morvant Elements goalkeeper.

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL