CLEVELAND — A nonprofit in Cleveland is building on a foundation of teamwork to help kids develop, using the unlikely pairing of soccer and poetry to help set the goal of improving the community. 

Paige Wright considers herself a natural athlete.

“I’ve been in a lot of different things,” she said. “Karate and swimming. Cheerleading, too.”

One sport the sixth-grade student didn’t see coming is soccer. 

“After I got used to being active and stuff, I feel like soccer’s the right one for me,” she said. 

“We are in communities that probably don’t see soccer,” said Ariel Jordan, a volunteer with America Scores Cleveland. “The people that they’ve grown up around and their families probably lean more toward things like basketball and football.”

Jordan’s been passing the black and white ball most of her life. 

“I think I started when I was 3 or 4,” she said.

And she’s been sharing her skills with the kids in America Scores for about a year now. The nonprofit exposes city kids to the sport, community service and also poetry. 

The way all three fit together is even hard for those participating in the program to explain. 

“Maybe poetry and soccer go together?” Wright said. 

“Soccer? It’s an active activity,” said Jordan. “Poetry? It activates your brain and makes you think in a different way, and express yourself in a different way. And that community service piece, giving back.”

Wright gives a piece of herself in her writings and performs poems in national competitions and poetry slams with the group. This year, the events were held virtually due to the pandemic. 

She’s participated in America Scores for four years and likes using her time in the spotlight for good.

“Anyone can be kind and help in their own way,” she recited from her poem called Kind. “Just by helping someone, you’re making someone’s day.”

She puts those words in action, sharing smiles by the bag-full as she prepared snack packs with other students in the program for folks who come to the Collinwood Recreation Center. 

“People think when you do nice things, you’ll get something back for it,” Wright said. “But I think you can just be nice to be nice.”

And she’s set the goal to continue working with a team in the future. 

“I was thinking a lawyer, but a professional soccer player,” she said. “I hear you get a lot of money for it. And having a woman professional soccer player I feel like would be good for the world.”