Indy Steelers Youth Football & Mentoring

We are the Indy Steelers , a youth football program for ages 5-14 based out of Tarkington Park  at 39th & Illinois. Every week our team keeps these youth off the streets, making friends, and learning skills like teamwork & strategy they can use in school and life.

Beyond a love of the game, the teammates have faced a great deal of adversity over the past few seasons, but still managed to compete at the national level. The first tragedy was the loss of 10-year-old Deshaun Swanson in a drive-by shooting while attending a family funeral. A drive-by shooting the year before left another teammate, Ty-juan Preer, in a wheelchair.

These are the realities faced by the youth of Indianapolis, but the opportunity to participate in the football program with the Indy Steelers gives these kids recreation & mentorship they need to grow.

We play other Indianapolis youth football teams and travel the country to national competitions. The team has managed to bring home second place titles in national tournaments, but it also creates much more than sweat and pride. The program is connected to the MLK Community Center  to provide homework assistance, literacy, tutoring activity, and support for parents. We volunteer in the community, hosting Thanksgiving dinner give-a-aways and Christmas dinner give-a-ways. We've also done park clean-ups, helped the Mozel Sanders Foundation, helped neighbors with leaf removal and more. Our teens participate in the Tarkington Park summer work program, teaching them skills needed to be successful, community-oriented adults. 

These opportunities, along with the lessons learned on the field from coaches and teammates, makes this program unique in its ability to shape our youth.

Your donation provides registration fees, travel fees, entry into tournaments, mentoring programming and the opportunity to help shape our neighborhood in a positive manner. We are also working on getting a bus to better serve our players and provide transportation to and from practices, games and mentoring sessions.