An indoor soccer arena in Watsonville smells like sweat. As music pumps from the speakers, two teams fight for control of the ball.
The players at this tournament have met before, but under different circumstances. One team wears navy. They’re law enforcement officers.
The other team comes from the Aztecas Soccer Academy, a program under the Santa Cruz County Probation Department that’s giving former gang members and at-risk youth a second chance. They wear purple.
“If you take red, which is the color that is claimed by Nortenos, and if you take blue, the color that is claimed by Surenos, and you put them together, you get purple,” explains Coach Gina Casteneda.
She’s a probation officer who started the program in 2008. Since then about 200 have gone through the program, and about 80% of the boys have not returned to the criminal justice system. She says soccer helps the teens rethink their identities.
“It’s about teaching them not only to be strong and courageous, but to be athletes and to identify as athletes, to have a healthy lifestyle,” she says. “And then we refocus them into school and education, helping them graduate.”
This tournament is a fundraiser for the Aztecas. The team has nearly 30 players, including Yoni Hernandez, who said the sport has changed his life.
“Maybe if I wouldn’t have gotten out of gangs, I’d probably be dead or in jail,” he says.
Yoni’s gang life began because of bullying. He had immigrated from Mexico where discrimination against indigenous people like him runs deep. And because he speaks Mixteco and has darker skin, the discrimination continued in Watsonville.
“When it came time to make friends, the only people that accepted me for who I am was gangs,” he says.
And like many children in Watsonville, Yoni’s mother worked long hours in the berry fields surrounding the city.
“There was no food at home,” he says. “I was hungry, and so I would hang out with my gang members.”
They invited him to go out and eat and started buying him new clothes and shoes, which his mother couldn’t afford. This gang eventually became Yoni’s family.
But by the eighth grade, it was time to pay his debts. The gang gave him a gun, a name and 24 hours.With the weapon weighing heavy in his pocket, he tracked down his target, another kid, not much older than he was.
“My heart was beeping really fast. I didn’t know what to do. My hand was sweating,” Yoni says. “And when I saw the person and I took out the gun, that’s when everything stopped.”
He dropped the gun and ran home. But walking away from a gang can have severe consequences, so his family left California for awhile. When they returned, he asked a teacher for help.
That’s how he met Coach Gina. She says a shared love for soccer helps the teens get past former rivalries.
“We right now have kids that are rival gang members that at one point have had beef on the street, but now, they’re able to pass each other a ball, work together, give each other high fives and embrace each other,” says Coach Gina, “because at this point, it’s not about gangs, it’s about teamwork.”
The players have the same goal: to be winners and to be champions on and off the soccer field.
The Aztecas win the fundraising tournament against the law enforcement officers. Probation Chief Fernando Giraldo hopes the teens also got a glimpse of what the future can be like. He points out that all the officers playing are Latino too.
“The kids look up to them,” he says. “They see someone that looks like them, talks like them, that speaks Spanish and that’s a big deal, so they say, ‘Wow. I can be successful in a legitimate way.”
Now 21-years-old, Yoni is on that path. He’s a student at Cal State Monterey Bay and dreams of becoming a firefighter.