T’ai Simm-Smith lays out small, brightly coloured soccer pinnies on the gym floor on a cold winter night in the Regent Park Community Centre.

Kids who gather here from the surrounding neighbourhood will don those colours and scrimmage under the fluorescent lights like they do every Wednesday night.

Since last summer, these kids can aspire to play on a competitive soccer team with jerseys representing their own neighbourhood.

The Regent Park United team for boys aged 13 and under was started by a group of volunteer coaches. They wanted to give them the same opportunity that children from other neighbourhoods have — to play at a higher competitive level.

Despite the recent redevelopment of their neighbourhood, the young people of Regent Park are still growing up in an area that struggles with violence and poverty. Sports programs are often unaffordable or, even when they’re free, simply too hard to get into. And often, there aren’t mentors to encourage them.

The first 20 boys to play for the Regent Park rep soccer team — along with their coaches, parents and backers — have written a different story. It’s about the things kids can accomplish when given the chance.

Playing 17 games in their first rep league season, the boys went undefeated. Now, two of them have joined the prestigious Toronto FC pre-academy program for junior players.

While Simm-Smith is effusive about their success on the field, he said the focus is not on sending kids off to the major leagues. The ultimate goal is for them to get into college or university. Those involved say the discipline and character-building offered by the experience has been the highlight.

“Nowadays, kids who do well are the kids who can afford to play in the competitive sports programs,” Simm-Smith said. Even those who aren’t exceptionally skilled should also be given the opportunity to develop at a higher level, he said.

“It’s a life lesson. You have to show up.”

Simm-Smith knows where these kids are coming from. He grew up in Regent Park from age seven, playing in the local, city-run soccer programs before attending the University of Toronto where he played on the varsity team.

He and fellow coaches Orville Reynolds, Galvin Binda and Tidiane Bah saw firsthand the potential those kids had. But the costs — anywhere from $900 to $1,300 per player — and lack of a local team made playing rep soccer a non-starter for most of them.

By word of mouth, the coaches connected last year with businessman and civil rights activist Denham Jolly, who lives in neighbouring Cabbagetown. Jolly signed on to be a major sponsor and gave the team $10,000 — enough to play in the Cherry Beach Soccer Club, with help from club president John Hendriks.

Finally, boys who came from Regent Park and the surrounding area had fresh uniforms, their own equipment and a lineup of opponents. They called themselves the Cherry Beach Regent Park Cosmos.

They were badly beaten in their first pre-season match (although, officially, there is no score recorded), with the boys taking a long time to set up — restless on the bench and fooling around.

But with some discipline and a lot of practice, the coaches said, the boys “transformed.”

“Once that responsibility was put on them, they really rose to the task,” said Reynolds. “I think the soccer truly is secondary to the accountability that it puts on the kids themselves — to be there and to learn and to participate in a group activity like that, respecting their teammates, respecting their opponents.”

Yassine Elbermaki was one of the two players picked for the pre-academy team — the first step toward making it into the academy where players as recently as this past week have gone on to get signed to the MLS first team.

The 11-year-old told the Star he was “very, very happy” when he was picked. He talked about the hands-on training he’s getting, including from the first team coach, and how all the practices and games are “very complicated for my parents.”

“I like the amount of energy you need, running, passing, scoring,” said Yassine, adding that he’s “working my hardest to reach the next level.”

His father, Brahim, says it’s been a joy to take his son to practices and games. “I can see that he’s very serious about it,” he said.

Brahim has a lot of praise for the coaches in Regent Park. “They’re doing a lot for those kids to be playing for free,” he said.

One of Yassine’s teammates, 10-year-old Leeroy Baraka Mureithi, was also chosen for the TFC pre-academy.

Leeroy remembered the first few games of their summer season with the Cherry Beach club being “pretty tough,” and described the coaches as “strict” but “nice” and “helpful.”

As for the future? “I want to play for Manchester City,” he said.

His mom, Caroline Mureithi, noted that one of the team’s rules is that players need to do well in school — and that’s not just about grades.

“It’s about how he conducts himself in school,” she said. “Because if he’s one person on the field and another person in the school than there’s something wrong, right? You can see the level of focus.

“It’s a blessing to the community.”

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Dino Lopez, the director of TFC Juniors, told the Star it is a big deal for kids to make the pre-academy, and that they are looking to find and develop players who can make the first team. They also prioritize school work, knowing that many who won’t make it as professionals can still go on to university-level soccer and other programs.

“It’s important to us to find the kids that are off the radar,” Lopez stressed, crediting coaches like Reynolds for helping give those kids a platform.

“Otherwise, we’re going to lose those players, and that’s a shame because know we lose a lot kids because the sport is not accessible.”

The logistics of fielding the team haven’t been easy.

Both their practices and games have been scheduled outside the community, which means the coaches and a group of parents have been ferrying the kids back and forth.

They’ve applied for permits to play on what’s literally their home turf — the new Regent Park Athletic Grounds, which was completed in 2016 as part of the revitalization of the blocks of what was once solely Toronto Community Housing. The coaches are still waiting to hear if they’ll get any times to play there. The city has not yet issued permits for the upcoming season.

The ongoing revitalization of Regent Park was sold to residents as an opportunity — in exchange for a disruptive relocation process and seemingly endless construction, the community would see new affordable housing and recreation facilities mixed in with condos and market-rent townhomes.

But accessing those new facilities has been challenging, with programs at the state-of-the-art Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre filling up quickly, leaving Regent Park parents lining up in the cold overnight for a chance of getting their kids into free swimming lessons or dance classes.

Playing at home is also about improving access for the families.

“If they could all just walk over to the field and watch ... I just thought it would be a very good community thing, a good thing for people to take pride in and also it would be great for the kids to feel everyone’s involved,” Simm-Smith said. “It will build a strong sense of community and identity and confidence.”

Hendriks, who runs the 2,000-member Cherry Beach club, said no team has the privilege of a home field so close to them and noted the Regent kids are paying less than others in the club.

The club has had access to the Regent field on some weeknights, when teams from other neighbourhoods play. He worries a permit for Regent kids would displace those already using the field.

“To me, it seems like there could be more time made available,” he said, suggesting weekends when games could also be scheduled under association rules. “We’re all in need of more desirable fields and we’ll try to do the best to accommodate the team.”

City spokesperson Jaclyn Carlisle said the Regent field is “well-loved and in high demand.”

It is largely programmed by the city from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. or purposely left for open public use. Outside bookings can be made from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Permits are issued annually, and the permit allocation policy prioritizes not-for-profit youth organizations.

“We remain committed to working closely with Regent Park community members on local access to recreation,” Carlisle said.

The city councillor for the area said she’d be interested in figuring out how the city could do more to help the team.

“We try to strike the balance of providing recreation time and access for everyone,” said Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 13 Toronto Centre). “However, I think it is important to invest in the young folks who not only have incredible potential, but who are also living in at-risk communities.”

Jolly, who started FLOW 93.5, the country’s first Black-owned radio station, continues to be the team’s major sponsor. He told the Star it would cost the city nothing to let them play on the Regent Park field, and said it would inspire other young people from the neighbourhood to join them.

“This is the age where you get them,” he said. “I want to see these kids succeed.”

For Mureithi, the team’s success highlights an important truth — one that’s now been proven to the team’s competitors, and maybe also to the players and their families.

“They’re equally good,” she said. “Our kids are equally good.”