OUR STORY
A SMALL FIELD.
A BIGGER FUTURE.
IT ALL STARTED ON A FRIDAY.
Sam didn’t speak a word of Spanish. His coaches didn’t speak much English. For a while, on that Brooklyn soccer field, that was the whole story.
Every Friday, Fiordaliza Marte-Peras brought her son Sam to a community center in Brooklyn for recreational soccer. Sam was young, he barely knew the game and every practice was run entirely in Spanish. But somehow, he followed along anyway. He watched the older kids, mimicked the coaches’ hands, learned the rhythm of the drills before he understood a single word of the instructions. Soccer, it turns out, has its own language, and Sam was already fluent in the part that mattered.
HE WASN'T JUST PLAYING...
HE WAS LIVING IT.
Before long, Sam wasn’t just playing soccer. He was living it. One day a week became three, then four. He wasn’t just improving as a player, he was becoming part of something. That team was his family.
A CONVERSATION ON THE SIDELINES.
It was on the sidelines of those Friday practices that Fiordaliza met Hector Melendez. Hector had spent over two decades as a community organizer in Brooklyn, the person local teams called when they needed a field, a permit, or somewhere for kids to practice when nowhere else would take them. Fiordaliza and Hector started talking.
Every week, the same questions came up: How do we get these kids in front of higher level competition? How do we build a real shot at something more for them? And just as importantly, how do we make sure more kids in the neighborhood get the chance to play at all?
A BIGGER PROBLEM
Because they had seen what happens when those pathways do not exist. Talented kids age out of recreational leagues with nowhere to go. Families who cannot afford travel team fees watch their children’s opportunities quietly disappear. A child’s love for the game should not end simply because their neighborhood has run out of next steps.
A PLAN BECOMES A PURPOSE
Those conversations became a plan.
That plan became a nonprofit. And that nonprofit became
BASA — Brooklyn Access Sports Alliance.
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"I Didn't set out to build a nonprofit.
I just wanted what Sam found on that team: belonging, growth, a shot at something more."
-Fiordaliza Marte-Peras, Co-Founder
THATS WHAT BASA DOES
We partner with local teams, the ones families already trust, and open doors to training, resources, and competition they can’t reach alone. We build pathways so that young athletes can go as far as their hearts and talents take them.
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HE WASN'T JUST PLAYING...
HE WAS LIVING IT.
Right now, there’s a kid on a Brooklyn field who has fallen in love with the game. What happens next depends on things that cost real money: a $75 tournament fee. A permit for a field. A qualified coach who can push him past what the neighborhood alone can teach him. Without that money, his story stops at the community center.
With it, it doesn’t.
BASA IS JUST GETTING STARTED
And that means you’d be one of our founding donors.
Helping build the pathway from the ground up, not just supporting
one that already exists. Your donation doesn’t fund an idea. It funds
the permit, the tournament, the coach, the jersey that turns a Friday
rec team into a real pathway.
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