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WILKES-BARRE — Out under a hot sun on Friday afternoon, a group of volunteers were busy scraping away the last of a pitcher’s mound in Coal Street Park.
Why? Well, that pitcher’s mound will get in the way of the Heights Junior Grenadiers, a junior football and cheer team looking to call that field home.
The work is being led by Jahleel Owens, 27, and Fatieem Grady, 32, both of Wilkes-Barre. Owens is the head coach of the football team, while Grady is the president of the organization.
To them, this work is about one thing: the kids of the city.
“We’re doing this so the kids can have something to call home,” Owens said.
According to Owens and Grady, the Grenadiers had previously used the football field used by Wilkes-Barre Area School District schools. Due to the upcoming consolidation of the district’s high schools, however, the Grenadiers have been left looking for a new home.
Grady said he went to City Hall “about eight times,” repeatedly asking if the Grenadiers would be able to use one of the baseball fields at Coal Street Park as their home field. Seven times, Grady was sent home empty-handed.
On the eighth try, Grady was told they could have the field, if they did the renovations themselves.
So that’s what they’re doing.
On any day the weather allows, Owens, Grady, and other parents of team members — along with some of the young players themselves — head out into the field and start digging.
Owens says it’s important that the field be finished, because the football team represents two things: a way to get kids off the streets, and a way to get them off their phones.
It’s easy for Owens to relate to the kids, he said, as he said he had a troubled past, and he doesn’t want the young members of the team to go down a similar road.
“Forget about what we did, it’s what we’re doing,” he said.
But besides keeping kids out of trouble, Owens said he’s just as worried about the role tech plays in making kids unhealthy.
“Technology is taking over the world,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with playing a video game, but when you know the game better than you know your school work, that’s a problem.”
That, Owens says, is where the Grenadiers step in: the team is all about teaching the members on how to be active and the social skills to work together as a team.
Owens doesn’t have any children on the team, but that doesn’t stop him from taking on an almost fatherly role: “I love these kids,” he said. There’s about 140 of them, between the football and cheer teams.
For Grady, though, it’s a family affair. His 7-year-old son, also named Fatieem, is on the football team, while his daughters, Samiyah, 9, Asyah, 12, and Indiyah, 14, all cheer for the team. Young Fatieem was diligently digging away at the pitcher’s mound while his father spoke with a reporter.
Grady has been involved with the team for the past three years, and recently took over as the organization’s president. He said he’ll definitely be around until the youngest of his children ages out of the team, and probably even after that.
Owens said the Grenadiers need to have the field finished by July 8, the start of the season. He said without outside help, they might not be able to make that deadline.
Grady said the team has approached numerous groups asking if they would be interested in donating either time or money into help renovate the field, and, so far, no one has agreed to help. So, for now, it’s just the parents of the kids on the team who are in the field.
But Owens and Grady seem hopeful. They said the team went 8-0 last year, even winning its championship. And they think their talents can only get better if they had a field to call their own.
“We got kids who are really good at football,” Grady said. “Imagine if they had their own field? They’d be even better.”
Anyone looking to get in contact with the team, either to volunteer to help with the field or to get their children involved with the team, should do so through the group’s Facebook page, which can be found by searching “Heights Jr Grenadiers Football & Cheer” on Facebook.
