NATCHEZ &045; The 16-hour trip these guys took to reach Natchez wasn’t anything compared to how far they’ve come from the start of their soccer careers.

Tom Feenan, Wes Errock and Rob Oakley ain’t from around these parts, you might say. All three grew up in England and moved to the United States several years ago after finishing up college.

They are in Natchez this week as part of the first visit by MLS Camps, a company that conducts summer soccer camps for youth soccer players and is affiliated with Major League Soccer, the top professional soccer league in this country.

With a handful of young disciples at the MLS Soccer Camp at Morgantown Elementary this week, they’re spreading the gospel of soccer to children from Natchez.

Early in the morning the &uot;munchkins,&uot; as Feenan describes the youngest campers, work with Oakley for a couple hours, while some slightly older kids work with the other coaches from 9-12 a.m. The evening camp works with high school age players.

In preparation for running the camps, all three went through a training program.

&uot;You train in what they call the kid-riculum,&uot; Feenan said. &uot;We try to do games that involve all the kids so it’s not just a line of kids with one at a time shooting at the goal. At this age they can have fun and learn.&uot;

Wednesday at 10 a.m., that meant playing something akin to Sharks and Minnows, in which players attempt to cross a given area without having a ball taken from them by a player in the middle.

The approximately 450 MLS Camps instructors work at events in all 50 states, working with about 250,000 children each summer.

&uot;They have camps in Alaska and Hawaii as a package deal, but we haven’t gotten that one yet,&uot; Feenan said.

The trio’s drive up from Florida, where the trio live, to Natchez was an adventure all of its own.

&uot;There weren’t any camps down there this week, so we got in the car and came up to do this one,&uot; Feenan said. &uot;We got to the panhandle and there weren’t really any hotels anymore, so we just kept on driving and finally got to Mobile.&uot;

In the end, they got here without further incident.

Coming to America was an easy choice for these guys who wanted to stay in soccer after their playing careers were over.

&uot;There were a lot of older guys that went before us,&uot; Oakley said. &uot;You make contacts and once a few people from our university were over here, they started coming to recruit more.&uot;

The summer camps are just part of a nearly year-round regimen of coaching and teaching about soccer for them.

In the spring and fall, they will work with private clubs in Florida on six to 10-week contracts to develop players and teams. Feenan said some of the coaches try to get winter work as well while some go home to Europe for a few months or weeks.