Prince George Youth Soccer Association Donates Equipment to Riviera Nayarit Teams Ted Clarke - Prince George Citizen
go to original March 18, 2015

Gaetano Mauro, a Prince George Youth Soccer Association technical coach, presents jerseys, balls, shoes and equipment to a group of young boys in La Penita, Mexico, while a young Mexican boy in La Colonia is all smiles as he ties the laces on his donated cleats. Mauro collected used equipment from his contacts in Prince George, and the PGYSA supplied the uniforms and 10 new soccer balls for kids in the impoverished region north of Puerto Vallarta. Photo by Dennis Parfitt

A year ago, Gaetano Mauro went to Mexico for a holiday and it reminded him of his boyhood in Italy.

He saw a group of kids playing soccer with a beach ball on a paved compound, some wearing shoes, most in bare feet, and it brought him back to his youth in Calabria, Italy, long before he immigrated to Canada at age 14 with his parents.

"I couldn't believe my eyes, they had nothing, they had two pieces of wood stuck in the mud with a piece of tree tied to the pieces of wood to indicate a crossbar," said Mauro. "Out of the 18, four of them had running shoes, the rest were barefoot. They were playing with a beach ball because they didn't have a soccer ball and their skills were out of this world. It was unbelievable the way they were handling that beach ball."

Mauro couldn't help but think back to his days in Italy as a young soccer goalie from a poor family.

"I couldn't afford a soccer ball and I would play with a ball made of rags tied up with elastic or whatever and it brought me back to my childhood," Mauro said. "We played on cobblestone roads with rocks on top of it. It's amazing I have knees left after diving on those roads as a goalkeeper."

The 68-year-old Mauro, one of the founding fathers of the Prince George Youth Soccer Association, thought about all the used soccer equipment going to waste back home in Prince George and came up with a plan to help the kids of Los Ayala, Mexico, fuel their passion for the game.

Read the entire story at Prince George Citizen.