We Are The Brooklyn Saints Is More Than A Documentary For Coach Gawuala

Netflix’s newest docuseries, We Are: The Brooklyn Saints, is an inside look at a youth football league in Brooklyn changing the lives of driven young athletes one practice at a time. The four-part series immerses viewers in the world of these players, some as young as seven, and the parents and community leaders who pour their time, love, and effort into creating opportunities for today and the future. But it's also more than the sum of its parts.

Founded in deep Brooklyn in 2008, a non-profit organization called the Brooklyn Saints put together a program for kids to use football as a tool to teach them how to work together, build character, and provide a safe environment to have fun. It became more than an opportunity to play football. From episode 1, kids are encouraged to care about the sport, but to always remember to put their education, family, and community first.

Coach Edwin Gawuala, who is seen in the series coaching the 9U team, has been involved since the early days of the program. After attending a couple of practices with some of the founding coaches, he knew immediately that he wanted to invest his time into creating a safe space and community for these kids. “Seeing them smile, having fun, and being a kid. Knowing I just wanted to be a part of that,” he told Refinery29 in late January. “I just felt like that was my calling to be on the field and helping kids out.”

A cornerstone of the documentary is the heartfelt and personal interviews with parents and coaches in which they reveal why the Brooklyn Saints mean so much to them. “It’s an outlet for the kids and it’s an outlet for the coaches,” Coach Gawuala continued. “They say coaches are saving kids' lives and it really goes both ways. The kids are actually saving the coaches' lives also. It’s a very important impact for the community to have programs like this for kids to go to.” He stressed the importance of positive programs, be it sports or art. Anything that a community can rally behind. 

For some who help with the program, it is the opportunity to connect with and encourage their own children. For others, it is an opportunity they wish they would have had growing up. From the get-go, it is clear that this team means the world of the kids who play whether they dream of going on to playing professional football, want to play in the hopes of getting a college scholarship, or simply want an outlet where they can see friends and do something they love.

Director and executive producer Rudy Valdez, known for his HBO series The Sentence, connected with the project personally. “Growing up, I rarely saw people who looked like me as the heroes of their own stories. This deeply impacted me as a person, and now as a filmmaker,” Valdez told Variety. “[The film] was an opportunity to feature the lives of our main characters with agency and from their own perspective; rather than the one often assumed for them. This series exists for them and those who will watch it with the hope that a new generation will never have to wonder what it looks like to be the hero of your own story.”

Coach Gawuala explained the importance of the docuseries. Not just the story it tells, but the way it tells it.

“Where we come from, we’re not familiar with having cameras in our faces and around us. If it’s a camera, it’s a camera to work against you. To have a camera to work with you to show the world what you do out here in the community and with the kids and making sure they’re smiling, having fun, and enjoying life, it was a really great feeling,” he shared, speaking to the power We Are: The Brooklyn Saints holds to inspire others to start programs in their own communities. “To see what they put together makes the feeling even better. It’s priceless.”

We Are: The Brooklyn Saints is now streaming on Netflix.