It’s a pretty good week for New York City FC. 

On the pitch, the club clinched their sixth consecutive playoff berth in its seven years of existence. They enter the postseason as one of the hottest teams in Major League Soccer and, as the No. 4 seed will play host to fifth-seeded Atlanta United at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 21. 

Off the pitch, the club reached a major milestone Wednesday, unveiling the 50th mini-pitch in the five boroughs of New York City in five years. 

Sean Johnson has played a large role in both accomplishments. The goalkeeper and team captain is as an ambassador for the mini-pitch project, serving as a role model for the city's inner city kids. 

“I think it's tremendous to see what the club has done in such a short amount of time,” Johnson said. “You’re providing access to kids across the boroughs for a safe space to play and access to the game in a way that really brings communities and peoples of different walks of the world together. I think it is an amazing accomplishment. And I know it's just the beginning.”

Wednesday morning, NYCFC players and staff, along with partners participated in a ribbon cutting at PS184 Shuang Wen in Chinatown. It’s the culmination of an ambitious project, called the New York City Soccer Initiative, a $3 million public-private partnership to construct 10 mini-pitches per year in underserved areas of New York City.

Complicating the project, and threatening its on-time delivery, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Construction projects throughout New York City came to a halt — and workplaces also shuttered. But they managed to build three mini-pitches in 2020, making a more attainable goal of 13 pitches this season to complete the project. 

That final pitch is at PS184 Shuang Wen, where the school’s principal credits the mini-pitch gave the school’s students a safe place to play when other after school programs were canceled.

Of the 50 mini-pitches, 49 are blue — the club’s primary color — and one is black. That pitch, opened on Juneteenth at Colonel Charles Yong Playground in Harlem, was built in partnership with the Black Players for Change and Black Women’s Player Collective — independent, Black player-led organizations focused on tackling racial injustices in society and in the game of soccer.

Johnson is instrumental there too, serving on the board of the Black Players for Change, an organization formed a year ago following the racially-motivated police shooting of George Floyd and others. 

“Sean is just an incredible person and great role model. Obviously, he's the captain of our club on the pitch, but walks the walk off the pitch as well,” New York City FC CEO Brad Sims said. “He’s the type of guy who is just such a great representation of what you look for in a professional and a leader. But even more so is everything that he's been doing off the pitch, especially over the last two years and his role in the BPC.”

The mini-pitches, located in all five New York City boroughs, provide a safe haven for children, a place they can go and forget about the difficult environments in which they live.

“You go anywhere in the five boroughs in New York and in many inner cities for that matter, you can see basketball hoops everywhere but now, we’re changing that narrative and in a lot of these neighborhoods you can also play soccer and you don't need 22 kids on a huge field to get together,” Sims said. “These are meant to be more kind of five-aside type pitches, but you could play three-v-three, two-v-two, you can play on a half of it just like a basketball hoop.”

Sims inherited the project when he joined NYCFC in December 2018 after serving as the executive vice president of franchise operations and chief revenue officer for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers for six years. 

That’s where he said he first heard of the unique undertaking, calling it “one of the most ambitious kind of community initiatives of its kind throughout any of the major professional sports here in North America.”

Sims and Paul Jeffries, the executive director of the club’s charitable arm called City in the Community, both said being so deeply invested in helping New York City’s most needy youth part of the club’s DNA. 

“It’s who we are, it’s what we do and it’s not short-term,” Jeffries said. “It is a good celebration of 50 mini-pitches, but what we’ll do in the next 10 years, we might look back at this and say it was just a drop in the ocean to what we want to do and our ambitions of what we can do in the community.”

Other MLS clubs and soccer organizations have followed NYCFC’s lead, with mini-pitches sprouting up in Atlanta, Baltimore, Bay Area, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, St. Paul, Tampa, and Washington, D.C. metro areas as part of the U.S. Soccer Foundation’s $6 pledge to create 100 mini-pitches by the end of 2020. 

The first was unveiled in Houston in May 2018. 

D.C. United built a mini-pitch at Petworth Recreation Center in Northwest D.C. in 2018, the Colorado Rapids installed a second mini-pitch earlier this year as part of a larger initiative sponsored by Target, the Columbus Crew built a mini-pitch at a Columbus school over the summer and FC Dallas unveiled a mini-pitch last month in partnership with two corporations. 

“It's amazing to see the importance of why pitches are built has been taken on by not only other clubs, but other cities, as well, I think is massively important,” Johnson said. “In the future hopes of continuously growing the amount of pitches and the amount of access to kids in different cities so that hopefully everybody has access in every community. And it's not a stretch, it's just an arm's reach away.”

Just like NYCFC isn’t satisfied with just making the MLS Cup playoffs, the same is true of the club’s community projects. Wednesday is a day to celebrate a major initiative, but it’s not the end of the road. 

The club announced a new project at the unveiling, with all NYCSI partners joining together again to construct and program 26 more mini-pitches in the lead up to the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in the United States, Mexico and Canada. 

There will also be the NYCSI Community Cup, a free 5-v-5 tournament across all 50 mini-pitches beginning in the spring of 2022. 

“We can’t stop now, right?” Sims said. “I feel like we’re just getting started as a club, we’re only in year seven as a club. I’m really proud of the achievements of the club on and off the pitch, but we’ve got to keep going.”