O

usman Sy slipped on his white Cascade helmet, grabbed his blue STX lacrosse stick and made his way to Ebster Park, one of the only fields in Decatur, Ga., a small city situated five miles northeast of Atlanta.

Sy, wearing a golden Decatur Bulldogs’ pinafore that matched the dry grass beneath his feet, could be distinguished only by the No. 37 on the back. He trotted onto the field for warm-ups and soaked up plenty of sun and playing time in a game against Pace Academy on this April afternoon. He picked up ground balls, connected with teammates on passes and continued to share the ball.

“I’m an assist type of guy,” Sy said.

After the game, Sy said goodbye to his teammates, who jumped into cars that drove away. He walked up Electric Avenue to the Decatur Housing Authority apartment complex where his family resides. Sy lives in a second-story apartment in one of Decatur’s public housing projects — many of which are sandwiched between Ebster Park to the south and the MARTA train tracks to the north.

More than two-thirds of Decatur residents are white, but in the Housing Authority, you’ll find people of varied races and ethnicities, including Sy, who is black. His description of the projects might also sound different than yours.

“I like that there are lots of different cultures and it’s really safe,” Sy said. “You can easily make friends. It’s safer than some other places.”

Sy’s parents, Mamadou and Aissita, are grateful their son has the opportunity to play lacrosse and the freedom to pursue it. That’s the reason they came to America — to give him and their daughter, Aissette, a chance to succeed.

Before Sy was born, his family was deported from Mauritania in 1990 amid widespread race conflicts and discrimination in the West African country, the last to ban slavery. His parents and sister were sent to a refugee camp in Senegal, where they stayed for the better part of a decade. They spent years just hoping to find food on the table.

The family’s luck changed in 2000, when the Immigrant & Refugees Service Corps provided a chance to move to the United States. Georgia takes in about 2,500-3,000 refugees from all over the world every year. Many resettle in DeKalb County, including Decatur and neighboring Clarkston.

In Decatur, Mamadou and Aissita Sy were able to make money and provide for the family, which soon included Ousman.

“Even with the language challenge and the culture differences, at the end of the day, there are more opportunities,” Aissita Sy said through her daughter, who was translating.

Ousman Sy joined the Decatur lacrosse program in fifth grade after watching his cousins play. He’s a member of the second wave of players in the program, which launched in 2002 with an equipment grant from US Lacrosse. The grant, offered now in the form of the First Stick Program, ignited a lacrosse movement in the Atlanta suburb and paved the way for the first high school programs in town, including Southwest DeKalb High School, which received boys’ and girls’ grants in 2011.

US Lacrosse provides comprehensive resources — including equipment, US Lacrosse membership and coaching education — to new and developing youth and high school teams in underserved communities. This year’s First Stick grants totaled nearly $400,000 among 128 teams across 45 states. Since 2011, US Lacrosse has invested more than $2.5 million in these programs — any of which could become the next Decatur.

Summer mornings used to start the same way for DeAngelo Watkins as they do now for Ousman Sy. Watkins would wake up to the sounds of whistles coming from Ebster Park. One day, he decided to see what the commotion was about. Watkins ambled from his Decatur Housing Authority apartment to the field. There, he found Don Rigger coaching lacrosse.

“I had never heard about it, and I saw these kids running around with sticks,” Watkins said. “I liked that a lot.”

Rigger walked up to a curious-looking Watkins, whom he recognized as the basketball player that wore work boots. Rigger handed him a stick. Watkins started working on fundamentals that day, and he was hooked.

That was the formula for Decatur. Rigger, a Baltimore native who moved here in 1984, started a recreational lacrosse program in 2000 with the hopes that it would reach kids all over town, no matter what neighborhood they called home.

“We didn’t want this to be a white sport in Decatur,” Rigger said. “The town is not all-white, and we wanted our players to reflect the population of the city. That was more of an active effort on my part and the other coaches to reach out and try to help convince African-American folks that this was a sport that kids would like.”

Rigger began by scouting basketball and football games, recruiting players to come join him on the lacrosse field in the spring. By 2005, the original players in Rigger’s program moved into high school, where lacrosse was not an official sport. He met with Carter Wilson, the Decatur High School athletic director, who agreed to add both boys’ and girls’ lacrosse programs with Rigger as the coach.

For the first few years, Decatur practiced on the field at nearby Winnona Elementary School. Rigger didn’t have all the resources, but he built the Decatur program into one of Georgia’s best, becoming a fixture in state playoffs and advancing to the state semifinals in 2012. But Rigger remains most proud of how his teams have united individuals from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Watkins, who is black, enrolled in the Decatur youth program in fourth grade and played through high school. But by 10th grade, life got complicated. Watkins’ family was evicted from its apartment building after failing to pay rent. They moved to neighboring Clayton County, which meant Watkins could no longer attend Decatur.

Rigger offered to house Watkins for the rest of his high school career, so he could play lacrosse. It was a saving grace for Watkins, who said his life was heading in the wrong direction.

“[Rigger] knew that if I was to leave the city, things weren’t necessarily going to progress the way they should have,” Watkins said. “At the time, I didn’t really understand it. He just showed me the path.”

Staying with Rigger and his family, including Rigger’s son Ben, who was a year older than him, Watkins thrived in school and on the field. Colleges started scouting him and he attended recruiting camps to gain more visibility.

Watkins picked Essex Community College in Baltimore, which boasts one of the nation’s strongest junior college lacrosse programs.

“Left in that situation that he was in, he would not have succeeded,” Rigger said. “He was not on track to be successful in life, when they were doubled up in Clayton. I see that as a success for lacrosse.”

Watkins graduated from Decatur in 2014. In two seasons at Essex, he appeared in 31 games, scoring 31 goals and adding 10 assists.

More importantly, Watkins found a way out his situation. Before leaving, a few days after his final home game at Decatur, he packed up all of the lacrosse sticks he wasn’t taking with him to college. Watkins walked over to the Housing Authority apartments to visit a younger friend who recently latched onto the sport.

Ousman Sy.

Watkins gave Sy a blue STX head, the one the boy still uses today.

“I could have given it to another high-schooler, but they are always switching their sticks,” Watkins said. “I wanted to give it to a kid that I knew would use it.”

Watkins now lives in the Baltimore area, works for a landscaping company and tries to continue playing lacrosse.

“It makes you feel really good about yourself,” he said. “From what I was doing with Don, to where I am now, they’ve definitely helped shape me. It’s been the entire city of Decatur.”

PHOTO BY KEVIN LILES

Ousman Sy wants to be a business owner when he grows up. It’ll be simple, he said: He’ll work for a health organization and help give back to the community. He’s also hoping for some schedule flexibility.

“I like that you can be your own boss,” he said. “If you’re a business owner, you can control your own hours.”

Sy’s parents, meanwhile, have embraced this new obsession of his. They look around Decatur and see a lot of lacrosse sticks and goals.

“When I first learned about the sport, I thought, ‘What kind of sport is this?’” Mamadou Sy said. “All of these parents, they’re Americans and intelligent people and they’re letting their kids play, so I’m sure it’s something really serious. After a while, we all began to like it.”

Lacrosse also gave Ousman Sy another sport to follow, along with basketball, his other favorite sport. He loves watching Atlanta native Scott Ratliff play for the local Major League Lacrosse team, the Atlanta Blaze, and has been to a few Georgia Swarm games since the National Lacrosse League franchise moved there from Minnesota. He’s an avid consumer of ESPNU and enjoys rooting on North Carolina, in particular.

Although he’s getting shier as he nears high school, Ousman Sy enjoys others’ company, whether it’s his neighborhood friend from Bangladesh or his Decatur lacrosse teammates.

“Lacrosse makes me really happy,” he said. “It makes me feel like I have a person or a coach to talk to that gives me a good relationship with certain people. It makes me feel free.”