Youth football teams from all over the city will play to stop violence this weekend

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — This weekend, youth football players from all over the city will be competing in a tournament for the same goal: to end violence.

The games will be played Friday evening at Riverside Park and Saturday and Sunday at Central Greens on the west side.

The M.G. Dad’s Club Youth Football League will be organizing the Stop the Violence tournament.

Their first tournament was held last year and honored one of their players who was shot in the back of the head by a stray bullet when he was just 13 back in February of 2014. Deandre Knox survived, but is now a quadriplegic.

This year they will play for Dijon Anderson, the Warren Central High School football player who was shot back in May. He was set to play football at Southern Illinois University.

The president of the M.G. Dad’s Club Youth Football League says he did not know Dijon personally, but many coaches in the league did, and so he reached out to Dijon’s mom to let her know they would be playing for him.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to be like an every year thing. This is a yearly thing so we’re going to be reaching out to whoever was affected by gun violence for one, to put the parents back in front of the news for two, to people to see the affect is deeper than what initially happens that day, people have to live with this loss and its affect and it’s just unfair to a lot of people,” Anthony King said.

King says they want to use football to teach kids more than just the game, they want to teach them about life, but he says they could use the community’s help.

For more information about the league, click here.

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