In football-mad Ohio, a camp focused on social justice is still going strong

Washington Post

5 days ago

DAYTON, Ohio — The buses came from all directions: rickety, yellow ones down the country roads stretching north; fancy, air-conditioned ones from the rich, private schools in the suburbs; dozens more from the urban cores of Cincinnati and Columbus, the rural hamlets dotting the outskirts, the struggling former steel towns scattered across the southeastern quadrant of the state.
They arrived all morning and well into the afternoon, disgorging their teenage occupants into the teeth of a sweltering Ohio day, deep in the molten core of summer. Emerging, shielding their eyes from the sun, were kids of all races, hundreds of them, toting backpacks, football helmets, water bottles and iPhones.
They may not have realized it, but they had come to take part in something that would feel almost miraculous, in the way one might experience time travel to a not-so-distant past.
Somehow, in the divisive, politically charged summer of 2025, in a state President Donald Trump carried by 11 percentage points last fall, an annual event called the Miami Valley Football Coaches Association Social Justice seven-on-seven tournament not only went forward for the fifth consecutive year, but by all accounts it enjoyed its biggest and most harmonious edition yet, attracting 68 teams and some 1,800 athletes, plus coaches and support staff, to six Dayton-area sites.
By the time the athletes climbed back onto their buses for their rides home — carrying all the same personal effects, plus the sweaty stench of a high school football locker room — they had scrimmaged against other local teams for two hours, gathered with those teams to listen to a guest speaker extol the virtues of diversity and empathy, and huddled in smaller, mixed-team groups to discuss prompts such as: 'What are some ways you can promote social justice/acceptance of others on your team? In your school? Explain.'
If there is another venture like this in the entire country, particularly at this moment, no one claimed to be aware of it.
'Why did we bring you here?' boomed the voice of legendary Dayton high school football coach Al Powell, who served as the guest speaker and moderator at one of the event's six sites, his voice soaring and falling like a preacher's. 'Not to tell you how to think. Not to tell you about one political party or the other. That's none of our business. We want to speak to your heart and hope that we will leave you with a message: Be good to everyone you come across.'
His voice softening, Powell added: 'All of our hearts beat the same. There's nothing in you that wakes you up in the morning saying, 'Today I'm going to mistreat somebody.' … Each and every one of you was born with a good heart. It's our hope that you maintain it, that you don't become bitter.'
It was Powell, now 67, who made the fateful phone call in 2020 that spawned the idea behind the Social Justice seven-on-seven tournament. On the receiving end was Jim Place, another local coaching legend and a member of the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, whom Powell, his close friend for more than 40 years, knew to be a gracious and like-minded soul. That summer, the nationwide protests in reaction to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police threatened to detonate the country.
'We've got to do something,' Powell pleaded to his friend. 'Our country is getting torn apart by hatred.'
By the end of the phone call, Powell, who is Black, and Place, who is White, were weeping. And they had resolved to use the only vehicle at their immediate disposal — football — to try to make a difference, however small it might be.
'We don't think we're changing the city of Dayton. We're not changing the state of Ohio. We're certainly not changing the world,' Place, 77, explained on the morning of the fifth annual tournament. 'But there's a small world called Miami Valley high school football. That's our world. And we're trying to change our world. We don't have delusions of grandeur. Let's just bring some kids together for one day to play football and talk.'
The seven-on-seven tournament certainly made a lot more sense in the summer of 2021, when the inaugural edition took place and featured 28 local high school teams. Joe Biden was the president. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives were on the upswing in what felt like a national reckoning on race in the wake of Floyd's murder. Pro athletes, teams and entire leagues were putting their names behind the notion of social justice.
Four years later, the very notion of a social justice movement seems quaint, as if from a different era or planet. The second Trump administration, along with its allies, has waged an all-out war on DEI initiatives, attempting to remove their influence from every aspect of American life, including schools and sports. In March, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed legislation banning DEI programs from public colleges and universities in the state.
But Powell and Place said they never entertained thoughts of scrapping this year's event; in fact, it grew for the fourth straight year, hosting eight more teams than last year. Place said there was not a single case of a previous participant suddenly withdrawing this year, though he said there are perhaps a few dozen schools, mostly in rural communities, that have consistently said no thanks each summer for reasons that seem to be obvious.
'I've had to explain to four or five coaches how we define 'social justice,'' Place added. 'I tell them, 'What it means to us is this: We're going to bring White kids and Black kids together to talk about race and acceptance.' Even for the schools that won't come, I don't think it's the coaches [making that call]. It's the communities — mostly the school boards.'
The organizers and guest speakers — which this year included ex-NFL defensive linemen Brandon McKinney and Keith Rucker, both Ohio products — carefully avoided hot-button issues such as immigration and proper nouns such as Republican, Democrat, Biden and Trump.
That football is the singular vehicle for this effort is not insignificant. There may be no other place in the country where the sport is more important to the community than the region known as the Miami Valley (named for the Great Miami River, which bisects Dayton), in the heart of Big Ten country. Dayton has at least some claim to being the birthplace of pro football: The NFL considers the Dayton Triangles' 14-0 victory over the Columbus Panhandles in 1920 at Dayton's Triangle Park as the first game in league history.
And as more than one observer remarked, the football locker room, at least in theory, comes as close to the melting-pot ethos of an idealized America as any other sphere of life.
'If the rest of the world were a football team,' said Steve Specht, coach of Cincinnati private school powerhouse St. Xavier, as he watched his team run through its pregame drills, 'we'd have a much better world.'
The seven-on-seven, two-hand-touch version of football, without pads or linemen, is the dominant form in summers across Ohio and elsewhere. And there is no shortage of local tournaments that bring schools together to compete in low-stakes scrimmages.
But none is like this one, tethered as it is to a greater purpose that never loses its relevance, even as the political winds shift.
'The fact we're doing this today is more important now than it was even three or four years ago. We needed this in 2021 — but now we need it even more, because things are pretty bad right now,' said Maurice Douglass, an 11-year NFL veteran and since 2014 the coach at Springfield High, about 25 miles northeast of Dayton. 'As much as we love the football, what happens afterward [during the social justice workshop] is even more important. Somebody in there is going to give you some knowledge that's transforming.'
Last fall, Springfield — both the town itself and Douglass's football team — was blindsided by the bizarre and false attacks from Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, and running mate JD Vance, at the time an Ohio senator, that Haitian immigrants in the community were abducting and eating pets. The claims led to bomb threats, school evacuations and an avalanche of national media attention.
'It was bad, man,' said Douglass, who has about 15 players of Haitian descent on his 2025 roster and, long after the rumors were debunked, still worries about their well-being. 'We just pray, man: 'Lord, protect my babies.''
After two hours of scrimmaging against three other teams at the University of Dayton's practice field, Douglass's Wildcats and the other players filed into the President's Lounge at the university's arena and found seats. The next thing they heard was Powell's booming voice.
'You're going to get a lesson you don't get in your classrooms,' he said. 'You're going to get a lesson that sometimes you dodge — because people are not comfortable talking about this.'
After a speech lasting perhaps 15 minutes, Powell stopped and gave the instructions for what was coming next: Stand up, walk to another table, find some kids who don't look like you, get into groups of about eight, no more than three players from any one team, designate someone as your group leader. Go around and introduce yourself with your name, your school and your position. Follow the discussion prompts geared toward an open dialogue on race and acceptance. Everybody must answer each question.
Versions of this exercise took place a total of 18 times across the event's six sites, the dialogue within each group varying from spirited to acquiescent to (occasionally) dismissive, depending on the group and sometimes the leanings of the designated group leader.
'A lot of people are closed-minded.'
'Slavery ended 400 years ago, so a lot of people don't want to admit there's still racism.'
'People want to be with their kind, and they don't want to be around others.'
'If two kids fight, and one's Black and one's White, is it racial? Or is it just two kids fighting?'
'Sports brings everybody together.'
'I still see a lot of hate and a lot of people who don't want to learn.'
'I don't really think racism is a thing anymore.'
'This one's a dumb question.'
Later, Joseph 'JoJo' Ward, a senior quarterback for Middletown High, a racially diverse team roughly halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati, would recount how he forged a connection with a kid from an all-White team during their breakout session. 'A lot of people like me, people of color, they tend to stick to their type,' Ward said. 'And he felt the same way about his people. And we bonded over how we felt people shouldn't separate themselves like that. We're all in this life together.'
When time was nearly up, Powell moved back to the microphone for the final instructions: Get your cellphones out. Take a selfie with at least five players who aren't your teammates and with at least one coach who isn't your coach. Post them later on your social media accounts if you feel so inclined.
The players were suddenly dumbfounded, scrambling to locate their phones back at their original tables or stashed in their backpacks. Nobody had so much as looked at their phones in perhaps 45 minutes.
It felt, in other words, as though some sort of small miracle had just occurred, wrapped inside a much larger one.