An organization founded to ease racial tensions among Boston teenagers is trying to make Town Field in Fields Corner a destination.

Some of Boston’s most violent streets border the large park, but that’s not deterring the employees and volunteers of All Dorchester Sports and Leadership (ADSL), who are working to transform the place. And young people are flocking to participate in the programs.

Things get going at 4:30 a.m., when Jeff Buckley, a Marine veteran, opens the gym and a few dedicated teens come in to work out. “A lot of these kids play high school sports, some of them are going into the military, so it’s good for them, very good for them,” says Buckley.

Andrew McDonough, who plays hockey at Boston College High School, has been coming to the gym for two years. “Jeff runs good workouts here and keeps us moving us all the time, so it’s great here,” he says.

Turning spaces into active places

This summer, the old bathhouse that serves as the cramped headquarters for ADSL was bathed in children’s laughter and energy. For the second year, the organization ran a day camp for about 40 kids.

Twenty counselors from BC High and other high schools were inside one minute, outside another, keeping tabs on the kids.
One of the counselors, Jaden Young, from Cambridge, a student at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, says, “I love the kids here.” But he works in a challenging environment. “You see the basketball court right there?” he asks. “We have people who drink, smoke cigarettes, weed over there. The influences are everywhere bad.”

No one was turned away from the day camp. Neighborhood kids whose parents ADSL Executive Director Candice Gartley had never met showed up on their own and were welcomed to meals and activities.

“A lot of the families, the parents, work” Gartley says. “They’re not at home, so the kids hang around at the playground and for me, it’s about creating community. It’s about creating a safe place for these kids.” And it has become a place to hang out.

The once-rundown corner of Town Field that the camp occupies was spruced up this summer. Gartley says dozens of veterans swooped in for four hours and put up bike posts, raised flower and vegetable beds, and replaced windows in the 1899 building.

“We had scoreboards built,” Gartley says. “We had benches built. They re-mulched and pulled all the weeds out. They cut bushes down. They built us a kiosk.”

A safe space, but a tough piece of turf

ADSL was founded during the busing era as the All Dorchester Sports League, a way to get black and white kids together without their beating each other up. The program now fields baseball, softball, and basketball leagues. Gartley says about 200 kids take part in basketball.

“It brings kids from different neighborhoods, which is really unusual around here, especially with gang activities,” he says, “but our basketball court is the safe space where everybody can play no matter what neighborhood they’re from.”

The program operates on a tough piece of turf. On the west side of Town Field are the elegant homes of Melville Park, but the north side leads up to Bowdoin-Geneva, one of the most crime-impacted neighborhoods in the city, so dangerous, in fact, that some parents don’t allow their kids to walk to the park, Gartley says, adding, “We got some push-back because the parents are worried about the safety of their children.” When coaches can, they walk kids to the field. And they keep them there until their parents pick them up.

Once the sun goes down, Gartley says shootings do occur on the basketball courts and drug deals go down under the bleachers. She works constantly to persuade people not to use the field as a bathroom while the kids are there.

“We do have a boarding house across the street, and at the bottom of the boarding house is a liquor store, and then across the street is the park,” Gartley says. “It’s a beautiful place to have a beer and sell your dope, and then when you gotta go to the bathroom, there’s a brick house, so you just go.”

Saving The Field

ADSL offers cooking classes, which have branched out from Town Field to Codman Square.

“So today I’m doing a West African peanut stew,” says chef Gates Cleghorn as he shows a small group assembled at his table how to chop onions. The kids bring their parents and grandparents.

Gartley says the idea behind the classes is to get children to learn how to cook nutritiously, and to teach their relatives.
“I want them tasting and trying new things, and sharing that information with their neighbors because there is not a lot of out-of-school activities for them here,” she says.

Gartley is trying to get more organizations to take up a stake in Town Field. Boston Latin School now plays some games there. So does The Roxbury Latin School. She has persuaded the Savin Hill League to use the field, too. And she is trying to persuade Mayor Marty Walsh to revive the practice of flooding the field in winter, so black and Latino and Vietnamese kids can learn to play hockey.

“I found out from my neighbors that 60 years ago, in Town Field, they flooded the field here, and they had a little ice skating rink,” Gartley says. “So I said, ‘We need to create that.’”

The city is replacing the 1940s field lights. The work should end in November, so the field, dark since last year, can resume hosting night games next spring.

“We’re not trying to save the world,” Gartley says. “We’re trying to save our corner of the world.”

This story was first published on Sept. 19 on the website of WBUR 90.9 FM, Boston’s NPR News Station. The Reporter and WBUR have a partnership in which the two news organizations share resources, collaborate on stories and re-publish articles and news reports.