ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Under 66-degree sun on Friday afternoon, 75 second graders raced across the fields of Mount Vernon Community School, dribbling through cones and lining up to high-five semi-pro players in red.
Watching from the sideline was Johnatan Nunez, the Alexandria Soccer Association’s outreach and school programs manager — and a Mount Vernon alum. He attended the school from kindergarten through fifth grade, and his parents still live down the road.
“It’s really nice to be back at a school that gave me so much growing up,” Nunez told The Alexandria Brief.
Friday’s session marked the second-to-last stop in the inaugural year of Soccer IN School, an ASA program that, over the past school year, reached every second grader in Alexandria City Public Schools — 1,360 students in all. Each child received a free recreational jersey, ball and take-home toolkit. Mount Vernon was the 13th of 14 schools to host the program, with MacArthur Elementary set to close out the year next week.
The program is funded by U.S. Soccer’s Innovate to Grow grant, awarded to ASA in partnership with the Virginia Youth Soccer Association, and locks in three full years of programming. Cohort two — currently first graders across the district — will rotate in next school year…