Episode 59 Orlando Medellin - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home

Orlando Medellin, Head Soccer Coach for Bossier High School, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

0:33 1. Orlando, you are the Head Soccer Coach for Bossier High School and so much more.

Let’s start here today. What country are you originally from and when did you first arrive in Shreveport-Bossier?

1:01 2. How did you end up at Bossier High, originally as a student?

2:06 3. You once said, “I love Bossier. I went to Bossier. I graduated from Bossier. I bleed green.”

One of the goals of this podcast is to help people develop more pride about the Shreveport-Bossier community by highlighting the positive and important work happening all around us.

Talk to me about your pride for Bossier City and your pride for Bossier High School. Where does that come from and how did you develop such strong feelings for this community and the high school you attended and where you are now the coach?

5:25 4. This season your team at Bossier High reached the finals of the state championship, only the third Bossier Parish soccer team ever to play in a state championship game.

Talk to me about your team this season and the type of players that mostly made up this year’s team.

10:24 5. Each week, the local radio station Kiss Country 93.7 shines a light on one of our local residents and they recently honored you. The letter that got you the award said the following:

“I’ve played sports my entire life and have had some great coaches, but I have never seen a man and his wife do so much for the players. A lot of his high school players are Mexican or Central American immigrants who can barely speak English. When they arrive at his school, many have very little means, even feed themselves. Some don’t even have families with them. All of his players know that they can call, and he will help them at the drop of a hat. Whether it be by feeding them, getting them jobs, getting them clothes, loaning them money from his own pocket to pay bills until they get paid, helping them find housing, or even letting them stay at his house with his family, he’s there. I have personally seen him give his own belt to one of his players who did not one. I have seen him drive to New Orleans to speak at an immigration hearing on behalf of one of his high school players on Friday to then drive all night to be at a travel soccer game for his younger kids in Dallas Saturday morning. And all he asks of his players is to remember that when they get in a position to help someone, they do the same.”

As someone who coaches so many of our young kids on and off the field, what are some of the lessons you hope to instill in the young people who spend time with you?

17:37 6. As you look around our community, what are some of the things that concern you the most?