DALLAS – Under the bright lights of stadiums across Texas, the pageantry of high school football is on full display every fall Friday night. It’s a tradition Kim and Bob Sawler adore.
One of their sons played high school ball in Keller and is now on the football team at Oklahoma Baptist University. They know how important good nutrition is to growing young athletes.
They founded Food for the Soul, a non-profit organization that provides backpacks filled with food to Tarrant County students who struggle to find their next meal, never expecting a phone call that would come from a Dallas church.
Kim recalls the conversation well. “She said, ‘Can you feed some athletes?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘Well they’re hungry,’” Kim still gets a puzzled look on her face when she retells the story. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean they’re hungry?’”
Kim discovered that some of the members of Dallas ISD’s Sunset High School football team didn’t always have food to eat.
The coaches needed help filling a food pantry, so the Sawlers, in disbelief that a football team could take the field on an empty stomach, spearheaded a peanut butter and jelly drive.
When they delivered those donations, Kim asked the coach about pregame meals. “He said, ‘Miss Kim, they don’t eat before practice, after practice or before a game,’” Kim recalled. “And I just said no. That’s not going to happen.”
So most Friday mornings during football season, the Sawlers and several volunteers gather inside the kitchen of Fossil Creek Community Church in Fort Worth. The church donates space to allow Food for the Soul to do what it does best – feed hungry bodies and souls.
On a recent Friday, they used nine pounds of pasta, five pounds of cheese, seven chickens and 17 cans of tomatoes and soup, to cook up a crowd pleaser. “It’s made with love,” Kim said, with a smile.
“We have children who are athletes. We know how much food they consume, how hungry they are before a game, after a game, all day long. To think of these guys in high school, trying to make a difference in their life by being an athlete, and not eating? We can help them have hope for the future by giving them food – that’s just, you know, that’s where we fit in.”
After the cooking is complete, they load the trays into warmers and drive southeast to Dallas. They set up a buffet, and soon after, the Sunset High School Bison come through, filling up their plates with pasta, salad, bread, and a banana for dessert. “When we first came I remember the boys saying, you bring us hope,” said Bob. “Wow.”
It’s been five years now. And the players still see the Sawlers as symbols of hope. “People are showing support to us,” said senior Jorge Vasquez, who plays center. “It’s something you don’t get too much where we come from.”
According to DISD’s website, 96 percent of Sunset High students are from families with low socioeconomic status. “They don’t know what they don’t know,” said head coach Chris Castillo, “but me coming from the outside looking in, I’m like – damn. How do we feed our kids? How do they have nourishment? How do they have energy?”
Castillo had not yet started coaching at Sunset when the Sawlers began their Friday night pregame tradition. He’s thankful they haven’t stopped. “We’d find a way,” he said of how they’d otherwise feed the team, “but it’d be different. It’d be peanut butter and jelly, it’d be whatever the coaches got money together for that day.”
“It gives me energy, it gives me motivation,” said junior Elihu Mora. “To know there’s people out here that want to help the organization gives me something to work for.”
Vasquez added, “The food is really good and it makes a big difference because that way our players don’t have to go out there hungry. And to see people actually care about us shows us that we have to keep on pushing for each other.”
Food for the Soul has partnered with another church to feed the football team at DISD’s Kimball High School this season. They’d like to grow to include more sports, but need help in the form of donations and volunteers.