Correspondence - Non Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Flores, Dora From: Andres Sebastian Bustamante < Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2025 1:16 PM To: eComment Subject: Expressing support for La Academia Attention: This email originated from outside of City of Santa Ana. Use caution when opening attachments or links. To whom it may concern, I'm writing to express my strong support and share my experience collaborating with La Academia soccer club in Santa Ana. I am a Professor in the School of Education at UC Irvine where I conduct research on positive youth development and learning. I am also a Santa Ana resident and all of my work is in partnership with Santa Ana schools, community organizations, and families. In 2023, I met La Academia's Founder and Director Oscar Reyes and had the opportunity to visit several practices, community meetings, and engage in conversation with their coaches and leadership team. I was immediately struck by the passion that Oscar and the team had for their mission of creating opportunities and promoting positive development in soccer and in life for their players. At UCI, we use a term inclusive excellence to describe how we strive to be excellent in all that we do, and maintain an intentional focus on brokering opportunities for individuals and communities who do not historically have access to higher education. I believe that La Academia perfectly exemplifies the idea of inclusive excellence. They compete at the highest levels of youth soccer, creating chances for children from Santa Ana to benefit from all opportunities that sports bring including college scholarships and career pathways. La Academia also has a strong culture of teamwork, persistence, positivity, and personal development which are skills that help children succeed beyond sports. I am now engaged in a formal partnership with La Academia where we are developing a new model for youth sports that emphasizes social, emotional, and cognitive development. The work we are doing will have far reaching implications for youth sports at the national and international levels through our partnership with Los Tigres de Monterey (the soccer club where Santa Ana's own Maricarmen Reyes is a star player) and will offer major visibility to the Santa Ana community as a leader in innovative efforts around youth development. I am proud to collaborate with La Academia because of the impact they make on Santa Ana children and families and on youth sports broadly. And I offer my strongest endorsement of the quality of their academy for developing the next generation of superstar soccer players and citizens from our great city. Best, Andres 12