Swanson: How a former USC kicker is inspiring youth in Puerto Morelos, Mexico

I like the idea of Pete Carroll chomping on his gum and telling his USC teams, “We’re going to do it better than it’s ever been done!” and having that message echo … echo … echo … 15 years into the future, when one of those Trojans, champing at the bit to teach and uplift, shares the same sentiment with his team of Tortugas – Turtles – in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.

And I love the notion that those kids, football newbies, might receive the message, internalize it and go repeating it to themselves for another 15 years, until they start telling their own teams of impressionable young people somewhere in the world, “Mejor que nunca…”

NAME THAT KICKER

Just how much of a USC devotee are you?

Remember the kicker on the 2009 team? He was a transfer from Nebraska. Sat out one year and served as a backup for another before starting in Carroll’s last season at USC. Made all 41 of his extra-point attempts and 12 of 16 field-goal tries.

Remember Jordan Congdon? The son of Christian missionaries, maybe you read about how he’d spend his free time on Skid Row, helping unhoused kids and families. A San Diego guy originally, he almost quit football because he believed his time would be better spent helping those people than going through the motions as a backup kicker. He would’ve walked away, he told me during a recent a phone call from Mexico, if not for his mom, Gayla.

“She was direct,” Jordan remembers. “‘Your goal is to work with kids on Skid Row and tell them to stay in school? You’re going to tell them to finish? How are you going to tell them to do that when you didn’t?’”

The point was good.

“So I stuck it out and won the job for that last year and got to have an amazing experience,” said Jordan, who got a big kick out of his appearances at The Coliseum and Notre Dame and, definitely, from every day he spent in Carroll’s orbit.

“Pete Carroll, man. Amazing guy. The way he coaches, the way he leads, his ability to empower other people is absolutely fantastic,” said Congdon, who was as inspired by his coach’s peace-promoting efforts in South L.A. as his football acumen.

“So much of what we do in our sports programs here is defined by the type of stuff we did at ’SC,” Jordan said. “His energy and his passion and way of motivating young people.”

Carroll had no idea until this past week that a former player has been doing his best imitation in a Mexican fishing town between Cancún and Playa del Carmen. That an old kicker of his has spent the past seven years channeling his college coach’s good gusto while growing a successful sports program for boys and girls, and not just that, but a childcare facility and school too.

“That’s such a nice thought,” Carroll said. “Incredibly powerful.”

“We were always in the vein of trying to make sure we were aware and giving back and doing more than just playing the game,” added Carroll, who left USC for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, whom he coached through last season. “It was important to make sure we were fully embracing the opportunity and good fortune we have.”

A CALLING

For Congdon, the NFL was a dream. The call to serve was an expectation. After graduating from USC, he earned his master’s degree at Princeton’s seminary school, wanting to figure out how he could most effectively engage with God.

At the same time, a young woman in Indiana was seeking similar direction, and feeling the urge to travel while always gravitating toward Spanish speakers in her vicinity.

April and Jordan hit it off immediately when they met as she was preparing to go on a home-building mission trip with Amor Ministries (the non-profit organization Jordan’s parents, Gayla and Scott, started in 1980), and they’ve been married now for going on 11 years.

They’re raising four boys between 6 years and 5 months – Judah, Jayden, Jaxson, and Jonah – a family on a mission in the rainy city they’ve adopted along the Yucatán Peninsula.

When the couple arrived in 2016, they thought they’d be building homes in line with Amor’s usual plan of action. But housing wasn’t the most pressing issue in Puerto Morelos, a community that isn’t immune to drugs and alcoholism, or to apathy and low expectations – which is what Jordan and April wanted to tackle.

Jordan remembers volunteering in underserved communities in L.A., and hearing kids in those neighborhoods discus dreams of becoming a pro athlete. But when he’d ask young people in Puerto Morelos if they had similar hopes, “their faces were blank,” he said.

What he and April heard from children there, many of them sons and daughters of service industry workers: “I just want to live a normal life … have an OK job. Not have to worry about paying bills too much.”

But Jordan and April want more for them.

“My biggest thing with the kids is, OK, you don’t have to be super-wealthy,” Jordan said. “But rather than working for someone in a restaurant, what if you’re able to develop and run your own restaurant, which would create a different livability for your family, so you’re not used and abused?”

What their new neighborhood needed wasn’t new houses, the Congdons thought. It was for someone to make use of the empty field down the street.

SPORTS FOR THE WIN

In July 2017, the Congdons started a summer sports camp.

“We were so American,” April said. “We were like, ‘We’re gonna design the T-shirts and they’re just gonna come, it’ll be overflowing.’ And then it was literally just Jordan and I, two buckets of sports gear and two kids who showed up every single day.” (And Jordan and April picked them up!)

“It was a rare thing to see people out there with kids,” April said. “It took that and people seeing that consistently to then think, ‘What’s going on here? Maybe these people are serious.’”

The people of Puerto Morelos learned they were serious. They are serious.

When Jordan and April started the first flag football team, it kicked off with just two girls before growing to a dozen kids. Now 100 show up regularly to participate in basketball, track, baseball, soccer and American football, he said.

The showing-up-regularly part has been key to earning their community’s trust: “I’m not going to say we’re doing something and not do something,” Jordan said. “But we learned at the beginning how important it is being consistent and show up every single day. That’s something at ’SC with Coach Carroll, that guy brought so much energy every single day it was unbelievable. I almost killed myself here trying to be like him.”

Jordan and April are not, of course, dealing with elite prospects who aspire to play in the NFL. They were making unprecedented demands on local kids, insisting on strict routine, on tip-top effort.

“There really is nothing like sports,” April said. “You’re helping them push themselves to their physical limit, and there’s something about that that teaches you can push yourself beyond your perceived limits in other areas of life, too.”

In that regard, it’s tough to beat tackle football, even if interest in that version of the sport has plateaued as flag football’s popularity spikes.

“The effort and discipline it takes to line up with shoulder pads and every single play and hit someone as hard as you can? That’s takes a different type of work ethic and discipline,” Jordan said. “That’s the reason we still do football.”

Quarterback Angel Bello is glad this former Trojan is still sticking with it.

“It helps me develop a lot as a great athlete and also and even more importantly a good person,” emailed Bello, one of five Tortugas who’s been offered a college football scholarship – he’s now playing at the local university, Anáhuac Cancún.

“Tortugas helps me to open my mind more, to be more disciplined in all aspects,” Bello added. “It helped me to be a good son, a good brother, a good partner, a good coach.”

BEYOND THE GAME

The Congdons have brought the same energy to their off-the-field efforts, encouraging kids to think about their spiritual lives and opening En Su Imagen (In His Image) Childcare, a program benefiting young children and caregivers – men and women – who receive training that expands their prospects.

Jordan and April have also just opened a school by the same name – for now, it’s kindergarten through first grade – that is hands-on and bilingual and meets all the Mexican school system requirements while incorporating Montessori and Waldorf concepts.

The Congdons hope to raise money to expand the educational operation, knowing fund-raising will require them to take time from everything else they’re focused on each day to tell the story of what they’ve up to in Puerto Morelos, where they’re trying to make life better. “Better than it’s ever been done,” a coach might say.

“It’s an amazing goal to pursue because it’s a never-ending pursuit of excellence,” Jordan emailed recently. “And God has given us this amazing opportunity to be in this place at this time to offer the young people in our community the absolute best, something every child simply deserves.”