Sr. Community Service - Tehjal Suri

This reflection was given by senior, Tehjal Suri regarding her community service with BRIDGE Lacrosse - Dallas.  

Martin Luther King, Jr. once commented, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

I go to a school where the tuition costs as much as some colleges. I drive a beemer. I own expensive Tiffany jewelry. I have the latest Macbook and iPhone. And yet, I’ve never felt spoiled because I ignorantly assumed everyone got what he or she wanted, eventually. I never truly considered myself in the dark until I met these kids, underprivileged kids living in the nooks of downtown Dallas.

After playing on the Varsity Lacrosse team for three consecutive years, my high school coach introduced me to BRIDGE Lacrosse, a non-profit organization established in Dallas, Texas to introduce diverse and traditionally underserved children to lacrosse.

So I decided to become a Co-coach for the 5^th-8^th grade girls teams. I teach them the basic skills, how to cradle to protect the ball in your stick. How to catch. How to throw. How to even just hold your stick. And while these seemed like basic things to me, that I thought were so easy, I began to see the frustration in these kids’ eyes. They were used to just kicking a soccer ball around and aiming for the goal, crossing their fingers and jumping around hoping the ball would make it into the goal. But lacrosse was a new concept to them. In soccer, touching the ball with your hands was illegal unless it was a throw-in. But now, the whole game was being played with your hands holding a flimsy stick. That was the only thing in control – a stick that came up to their waist and that had a “head” attached to it. But as these girls struggled, one kid stood out to me.

Her name was Manny Gonzalez. But I call her “Speedy Gonzalez.” The name kind of describes her best – she was the speedy one on the team. And she never gave up.

After our usual warm-up and skills practice, we sometimes would schedule a scrimmage, boys against girls. But, of course, the girls weren’t too excited because they were afraid to show their weakness in front of the boys. They could barely go four steps and keep the ball from dropping and now we wanted them to play a whole game against these rough and tough boys? As the game started, one after one the girls dropped the ball from their stick only to be stolen by one of the boys. Finally, Speedy Gonzalez was fed-up. She hated two things the most: 1) anybody being faster than her. And 2) losing. This second one decided to give her boost because the next minute I witnessed was amazing. Suddenly as I blew the whistle for the circle draw to begin the game, Speedy Gonzalez caught the ball in the air, ran as fast as she could, yelling to her teammates “COME ON PEOPLE! Where are you when I need you. What do you have to lose? Just run with the stick and have my back” as she headed straight for they boy’s goalie. Now a happy ending would be that she got the ball in the goal. But instead, the ball went straight for boys’ goalie, and let’s just say it hurt in the wrong place. But the girls could care less. They jumped up and down, cheering like cheerleaders because they had FINALLY gotten the ball past the midline, and this time it was on the offensive side of the field. After that, every girl made a run for it, some still missed the goal and watched the ball roll out into the road, but they didn’t care. They had finally learnt it wasn’t about winning.

And that’s what I loved about these kids. They finally realized, they just had to give a little. Give a little push. So what if they didn’t make it into the goal. It was an even bigger accomplishment that they could correctly cradle the ball and not drop it for a whole 50 yards!

 

Lacrosse has always been a sport that helped to teach me values like commitment, teamwork, respect, and responsibility. Speedy Gonzalez showed commitment and encouraged the others to do the same and this encouraged teamwork. Her teammates respected her enough to trust her and realize giving up wasn’t an option.

Coaching the kids at BRIDGE made me realize that I can give back to my community by creating more possibilities for these kids to become successful adults. I can see the light Mr. King mentioned – the light that shows me there’s more to the world than the “private-school-student bubble” I live in.