Former NFL Player Scouts Local Sites for Youth Mentoring Program

An ex-NFL and San Diego State University quarterback met with three local leaders last week to promote a football mentoring program for fatherless youth.

Two out of every five boys in the country do not have a biological father in the home, the former football player, Greg Roeszler, told John O'Reilly, Stan Stark and Ofie Escobedo at a morning meeting in Escobedo's store, in the Carlsbad barrio.

O'Reilly, a local investment adviser, heads a mentoring program called Teammates of San Diego North Coast, and Stark is the president of Carlsbad Pop Warner, a league for youthful football players age 5-15.

Stark said there are 550 players and in the Carlsbad program.

Although commending Roeszler's program to teach high school youth to mentor younger players in both athletics and citizenship, Stark said he isn't sure Carlsbad is the right place to begin the program in Southern California.

Roeszler said the program, called Playmakers and based in the Sacramento area where he is a high school coach, has been successful with at-risk youth in the inner cities. 

Carlsbad, the local men noted, is affluent. (Median household income is over $56,000, per the San Diego Association of Governments.)

But Stark agreed with Roeszler that there probably is no biological father in two of five households on his own block.

Single moms often need help with their sons, no matter the economics, Roeszler said.

The program, Stark suggested, might work best in Oceanside, Vista or San Marcos, and he said he would set it up for Roeszler to speak at a meeting of the coaches of 19 Pop Warner teams in North County.

“We are a mentoring organization,” Roeszler said—one that involves training coaches and local youth to mentor younger players, with the chance to play football as the lure.

“Think what that does for the maturity of the high school kid,” O'Reilly said.

Roeszler's organization offers a free yearly football camp.

 “It does not cost a dime [to the child's family],” Roeszler said. To pay the $400 annual per-child cost of his program, he depends on business sponsorships, so he is looking for those in the Carlsbad area as well.

 “Our goal,” Roeszler said, “is that we will be mentoring 100 kids [locally] by this time next summer.”

He said he is not that familiar with the region, to know where the greatest need is.

Roeszler said he chose Carlsbad because he knows O'Reilly through a University of Nebraska alumni group.

One of the former NFL players who works with Roeszler on the project is David Humm, a Nebraska grad and, like Roeszler, a one-time Oakland Raider; Roeszler said he was a fourth-string quarterback for the Raiders in 1980.

Escobedo said, from her standpoint, what is needed is a program that includes the youth who hang out around her store, long the capital of the barrio.