Leadership and Respect Theme Analysis

The Fugees would not exist without the team’s fearless leader, Luma, who is often very tough on the boys and demands they play by her rules. Although Luma’s rigor is sometimes off-putting to the Fugees, her toughness is not simply for the sake of being harsh; instead, her demands are due to the fact that she truly wants the boys to achieve success, both on and off the field. Luma understands that sometimes being a leader and having respect don’t necessarily mean being liked, gaining accolades, or even being kind. In the end, her only goal is for the boys’ lives to have improved and for them to feel like they’ve achieved something together.

Luma learns leadership from her own first coach, Rhonda Brown, who coached volleyball at the American Community School that Luma attended growing up in Jordan. Rhonda sets the example for Luma that being tough can still earn respect. Rhonda expects her players to be on time to practice, to work hard, to focus, and to improve. She drills her players and subjects them to lots of running, making them exhausted. Luma sees that her other teammates are lazy, and so invites Brown’s challenges because she does want to improve. Luma admits that she disliked Brown, but also acknowledges how much she wanted to play well for her and how much Brown earned her team’s respect. Perhaps one of the most important things that Brown does is join in on practices with her team, setting an example for them to follow. “She didn’t ask us to do anything she wouldn’t do,” Luma recounts. “Until then I’d always played for me. I’d never played for a coach.” Eventually Luma sees that this strategy gets results, as the team improves and even the slackers begin working hard.

Luma adopts many of Brown’s strategies with her own team. She does not need to be liked, simply respected. She is also keen to set an example for the boys when they question her authority. Initially, the boys are hesitant to have a woman for a coach, but Luma quickly dispenses with that hesitation. She tells a boy who questions her authority to stand in goal. She kicks the ball directly at him, and he dives out of the way instead of blocking it because it rockets so directly at him. No one questions her ability to coach a team after that, but the boys still question some of her rules. One player in particular, Prince, refuses to adhere to Luma’s rules requiring the boys to keep their hair short. She kicks him off the team. Even though this prompts some further unrest between her and other boys, she knows that if she were to relax the rules for one person she could not claim authority over her team. When more and more players start to disrespect her, Luma cancels the Under Fifteens team. Kanue, one of the boys who follows all of her rules, is adamant about having more tryouts. He tells Luma that he appreciates her, and that the new team he builds is going to “follow the rules and give her the respect she deserves.” He understands that the things she does, she does in order to help them succeed. Even though Luma’s methods are not always popular, the boys recognize that they have a purpose and respect her for trying to build a strong and cohesive team.

Luma knows that her leadership does not have to stop with the soccer team. She also gains an enormous amount of respect by helping the boys and their families outside of the team. She assures parents that she will take care of their sons while they are playing for her, and they even start to see her as a “stand-in mother.” One boy, Fornatee, says that Luma “cares about you like she’s your parent.” Sometimes she babysits the boys when their mothers, who are often single parents, have to work. Luma also sets up tutoring classes for the students to help them learn English, requiring her players to attend or lose their spots on the team. Everything she does is in service of allowing the boys to succeed. At the end of the book, she holds full-time classes at the Fugees Academy to help them with the specific challenges of attending school in America as a refugee. Luma helps translate documents for parents and makes appointments with doctors and social workers. Teachers reach out to her when they can’t reach the boys’ parents. In return, the boys’ families deeply respect her and repay her kindness with food and by including her in their families.

Luma’s leadership tangibly improve the lives of the Fugees, both on and off the soccer field, demonstrating the success of her methods and how the boys’ respect for her pays off. Mandela, a troublemaker who has a falling out with Luma, eventually reconciles when he recognizes that some of the other boys who had disrespected her were bad influences. With Luma’s help, he applies and is accepted to Job Corps, a government program that provides vocational training and offers a high school degree. Several of the students are accepted to a liberal arts college in North Carolina—some are able to do so with the help of scholarships to play soccer. With the help of Luma’s tutoring program, many of the boys’ grades, and particularly their English language skills, improve markedly.

Luma acknowledges that her methods aren’t perfect and wouldn’t be suitable for every person. But St. John demonstrates how Luma’s strategies work for her unique role and allow her to invest her time and energy to do something positive for the Fugees. In showing how Luma is harsh but that the boys still respect her and are able to improve, St. John argues that leadership is not about creating miracles or even about being popular; instead, it is about being able to do some concrete good in the world.