April 2009

SL Interview: Warren St. John on Refugees, Soccer, and Starting Over in America

The city of Clarkston is located about ten miles northeast of Atlanta, Ga. In 1980, the town’s population was 90 percent white, but that soon changed – and fast. An abundance of inexpensive housing and Clarkston’s proximity to Atlanta were two key factors why the town became, in the late 1980s, a resettlement hub for refugees from the world’s most troubled corners: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan.

“From 1996 to 2001, more than 19,000 refugees from around the world resettled in Georgia,” according to Warren St. John, author of “Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Team” (Spiegel & Grau; Amazon). “Some have endured unimaginable hardship to get here: squalor in refugee camps, separation from siblings and parents. One saw his father killed in their home.”

A reporter with The New York Times, St. John was intrigued by the inherent tension between the newly arriving refugees and the residents of Clarkston. He chose to tell this modern-day American immigration story through three boys’ youth soccer teams formed from the teenage talent of the refugee families. They decided to name themselves The Fugees.

A good chunk of St. John’s book focuses on the extraordinary efforts of coach Luma Mufleh, herself an immigrant from Jordan, to keep the youth soccer program afloat. She faces unique challenges, including language, cultural, and religious differences among her own charges. And, in the course of the book, St John recounts how she faces her own demons.

This is St. John’s second book. His previous work, “Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania,” was his personal account of following the die-hard, tailgating corps of University of Alabama football fans.

SportsLetter interviewed St. John by phone from his home in New York City.

–- David Davis

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SL Interview: Author Mark Hyman on America’s Youth Sports Obsession

As a journalist, coach and sports parent, Mark Hyman has been immersed in the culture of youth sports. His new book, titled “Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids” (Beacon Press; Amazon), is an indictment of what he sees as the myriad problems that have beset kids’ sports.

In researching and writing the book, Hyman interviewed coaches, parents, children, psychologists, sports medicine experts and Olympic athletes. What he discovered disturbed him. “Across the country, young players are all too frequent victims of a sports culture that seemingly is turning its back on them,” he writes in the introduction. “Injuries are just one troubling manifestation. With each passing season youth sports seems to stray further and further from its core mission of providing healthy, safe and character-building recreation for children.”

Hyman assigns much of the blame on parents, who have usurped control of youth sports. “It’s not the presence of adults that is distorting youth sports,” he writes. “Rather, the issue is our well-documented impulse to turn sports for children into a de facto professional league.” According to Hyman, “Only the kids are losers here. Their voices are rarely heard, and then only to justify the questionable judgment of adults.”

In the book, Hyman does not shy away from what he describes as his own “unflattering” behavior. He writes about having his son, Ben, pitch in a baseball game despite being injured. Writes Hyman: “I watched with regret and, in short order, remorse, as an injured boy attempting to please his dad lamely lobbed balls at home plate. . . Only one of us had anything to be disappointed about that evening. It surely wasn’t Ben.”

From 1986-1997, Hyman was a reporter with the Baltimore Sun. Today, the Baltimore-based writer is a contributing editor at Business Week. This is his second book; previously, he authored “Confessions of a Baseball Purist” with broadcaster Jon Miller.

As Hyman geared up for book promotion duties, SportsLetter spoke to him via phone.

-– David Davis

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