Normally standing in front of a handful of local TV cameras and voice recorders, Louisville City FC players took a knee after training Thursday morning, sitting level with a group of Fairdale Elementary School students wearing their own press credentials.
More than 30 kids from the English as a Second Language program arrived with notepads and tablets in tow, executing a class assignment that involved getting to know the pros. Assistant coach Daniel Byrd, whose sister, Kathy, teaches in the ESL program, organized the visit.
“They can look at these professional soccer players who learned to speak English as their second language, and stay focused on that and see that as very important and see that it helps provide a better future for them,” Byrd told The Courier-Journal.
The conversations started with Ireland native Niall McCabe and England’s Paco Craig, both products of Georgia’s Division II Young Harris College who came to the United States to play soccer.
One student asked the duo what the guys in the yellow shirts were doing. Goalkeeper Greg Ranjitsingh ran through drills in the background.
“When Paco doesn’t do his job, then Greg has to do his job,” McCabe joked about Craig, a defender.
Others, including Denmark’s Magnus Rasmussen, Serbia’s Ilija Ilic, Israel’s Guy Abend and Enrique Montano, a son of Mexican immigrants, fielded questions.
Rasmussen hoped the students learned something Thursday other than English.
“That it’s important to continue doing what you want to do,” he said. “Believe in your dreams. They visited a professional soccer team today and everyone here, their dream was to be a professional. Obviously they can maybe get their eyes open to that and maybe they can see, ‘OK, it can happen to me as well if I work hard and stay focused.'”
