A soccer goal at Schisto Camp in Athens, Greece. Photo by Tom Salotti

By Tom Salotti

ATHENS – Greece became a symbol of athletics more than 2,000 years ago, when its citizens founded the first Olympic Games.

Today, like their ancestors, Greeks enjoy a variety of sports, many outdoors in a Mediterranean climate featuring warm temperatures and clear skies. Soccer, basketball and volleyball are popular, but Greeks aren’t the only folks getting sunburned on the courts. Migrants, fleeing violence and persecution in the Middle East and Africa, now are also joining the games here.

Schisto and Eleonas, two migrant camps in the region, have built athletic facilities and provide opportunities for refugees to participate in activities that have been practiced in Greece for centuries.

Schisto is west of Athens’ city center, separated by rolling hills. Residents must take a bus or find a ride to buy essentials. About 868 people live in Schisto, mostly originally from Afghanistan and Syria. While there are conflicts, sometimes along ethnic or language lines, all nationalities come together to play sports.

In the center of the camp is a large courtyard flanked by a school and medical buildings. Tents hold migrants awaiting more permanent dwellings. Most of the remaining space is consumed by a gravel soccer field with two goals that have seen lots of use. A few yards from the courtyard is a cement slab with a net, which passes as a volleyball court.

You won’t see many residents playing during the middle of the day when the sun is at full blaze. Such activities are saved for the mornings and evenings when it’s cooler.

At Eleonas camp, 1500 asylum seekers from 35 countries share a variety of sports facilities. A small area is set aside as an outdoor gym, with blue metal exercise machines, including an elliptical trainer, sit-up bench, stationary bike and shoulder press. Adjacent is a red-stone basketball court.

The camp is also home to a mid-sized soccer field made of artificial turf. Goals are missing nets and the fence surrounding the field is filled with holes. Soccer is a popular sport in both Europe and the Middle East.

Barca Foundation, soccer club F.C. Barcelona’s charitable arm, has hosted children from Eleonas and other refugee camps for a day of sports and entertainment that promoted “social inclusion and productive conflict resolution,” according to a press release.

The foundation’s work is part of a broader push to use athletics, especially soccer, to improve the lives of displaced children. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), sport can be a “positive catalyst for empowering refugee communities, helping to strengthen social cohesion and forge closer ties with host communities.” Organized athletic activities, the agency contends, helps to eliminate stereotypes and break down barriers.

Jason Steinberg, executive director at the International Sports and Music Project, told the  soccer non-profit known as the One World Play Project that he’d never seen so much emotion at a refugee camp than when residents were playing soccer.

“Soccer has given hundreds of people something to look forward to,” he wrote. “Something to make them feel free at a time when freedom does not abound.”

Asylum seekers do not have a comfortable or relaxing life while living in camps like Schisto or Eleonas. But athletics provides a way to escape reality for a brief moment, build community with other refugees and migrants, and keep up the Greek tradition of athletic excellence.