Refugee soccer team seeks field of dreams
2/1/07; 5:08 p.m
by Andy Phelan
andy@dekalbchamp.com
Luma Mufleh |
Lee Swaney |
Some places are best known for their grassy knolls, others for their field of dreams.
Now thanks to a The New York Times article, Clarkston, this sleepy little town split by train tracks near the crossroads of Ponce de Leon Avenue and I-285, is becoming famous for a field, too.
The article by reporter Warren St. John, “Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field,” depicts a less than hospitable town elder who bans a soccer team made up of refugee children from playing on a field at Milam Park.
“There will nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,” the article quotes Mayor Lee Swaney. Later he faxed their coach Luma Mufleh and told her the team was no longer welcome at the field in question.
Swaney said he went down to the park one evening and saw what appeared to be adults drinking and playing soccer. “That field is not made for grown people, it's made for children,” he said.
It was, said Swaney, part of the reason he sent the fax baning the Fugees.
Mufleh said she had no idea what Swaney was talking about. “My team is made up of kids 9 to 17,” she said. “I had nothing to do with whoever was playing on the field that night.”
The story, which highlighted the struggles of the children and their families, discussed attitudes of class, race and prejudice faced by the refugees who came from such war-torn countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, Congo and the Sudan.
“I don’t have a field to play on,” said Mufleh, who returns to City Hall on Tuesday to try and secure rights to the field for her displaced team.
But Swaney said the coach and her team do have a field to play on – adjoining Armstead Field – and he’s upset that St. John and the Times “took our goodness for a weakness.”
While Swaney admitted he sent a fax to Mufleh this winter banning the Fugees, “I later agreed to let them play soccer at Armstead, and they’re still allowed to practice there. This guy [St. John] came down here from New York City and degraded us.”
Courtesy of The Fugee Foundation |
While the mayor challenged the Times’ story as “factually inaccurate” and “taken out of context,” St. John defended his Sunday front page centerpiece.
“We at the Times stand by the story,” he said. St. John, the popular author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, a book about a road trip that explores the heart of hardcore Alabama Crimson Tide football fans, is also turning his Clarkston experience into a book.
For the record, St. John said he's from Birmingham, not New York.
Last week, Universal Pictures agreed to spend $3 million on the rights to the story. The studio also bought the movie rights to the life of coach Mufleh, who launched a Fugees Family Foundation with $500,000 from Hollywood to help refugee families with housing.
“It’s weird,” said Mufleh of her new-found celebrity. “I was coming back from a soccer tournament in Savannah last week and a lady recognized me from the article. She was saying ‘God bless you’ and that she read about me. It’s been wonderful.”
Because of the buzz, officials from Agnes Scott, Decatur and Emory have offered their fields to the Fugees for practice.
“I didn’t accept because my kids live in Clarkston,” said Mufleh. “That’s where they are from. I shouldn’t have to bus them so they can play soccer.”
Although coach Mufleh isn’t sure what kind of reception she’ll get at city hall on Tuesday, Swaney made it clear in a statement that Clarkston, known as the Small Town, Big Heart, is not the intolerant old Southern curmudgeon depicted by the Times.
“We are very proud of the Fugees’ success, which is a positive outcome from Clarkston being among the most diverse cities in Georgia,” he said in a statement. “The Fugees represent the best of what the human spirit can accomplish by overcoming oppressive conditions in their native countries and coming together in their new community to achieve success through the power of sports and team work.”
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