Attack-minded player Omar Kreim scored one of the most memorable goals of the Island Games when his stoppage time free kick levelled the score against York9 while the Wanderers were down to 10 men.

While his on-field contributions have been noteworthy, he’s also putting in the work off the field as the players support social justice. He’s one of the HFX Wanderers representatives on a committee with players and the league that meet to discuss what they can do to help the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We said to the league and between us, we don’t have to be passive, to wait for something to happen to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement,” said Kreim. “To be proactive and do something each week or every few days, to show everyone that the players in the league are behind the movement and we support it.”

While players, coaches and officials have sported Black Lives Matter pre-match t-shirts all tournament, they showed they were a unified front in a game between Atlético Ottawa and Cavalry FC. All eight teams took a knee during the Canadian national anthem then had a moment of silence. The six teams not playing stood in solidarity on the sidelines and then all teams held a moment of silence at 8:46 to honour George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minnesota in May. This moment came the same week where professional leagues across North America took action after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.

The teams continue to hold moments of reflection during the national anthem and then for the first minute of each match.

“It’s just important because it shows that we care, we care a lot. We don’t have a lot of action that we can do now that we’re playing. I think it’s the minimum to show everyone that, yeah, we play soccer, we’re athletes, but we’re more than that,” said the Wanderers attacking midfielder, when asked what he’s thinking about in those quiet moments.

Kreim says the players care about each other a lot and recognizes that there are a lot of players in the league who have direct experiences from systematic racism and profiling from the police.

The CPL is the only all-Canadian professional soccer league in the country and is still relatively new. These actions by players and coaches actions in unity set a precedent for the league moving forward.

“We want to make it clear that we don’t accept (racism) and if all the players can come together and show the fans and the children that follow the league that we can’t accept that on the field. We’re trying to erase this cancer from the sport,” said Kreim.

The midfielder has had his own experiences with racism. While he says the incidents aren’t frequent, he’s still experienced them around once per season the last 10 or so years. Kreim is Canadian, having moved to Montreal from Morocco when he was seven. He’s Arab, he’s Muslim and has a Black father.

“I had all these things together and sometimes it’s Islamophobia, sometimes it’s more comments towards the Arab community and sometimes it’s because I’m brown, I’m not white. So it depends each time. Like I said before, it’s different issues and we have to figure out how to erase that from the soccer field,” he said.

After George Floyd’s death, the Wanderers began a series of initiatives around Black Lives Matter to ensure the team and the Wanderers Grounds is a safe place for everyone. One of the steps included adding the role of inclusivity officer to staff member Marvin Okello.

“In Halifax, we did good because we did it a few months ago. I think it’s something we can do with each team, to have an inclusion member from each team, to show each team cares about those social injustices,” said Kreim.

The Montrealer has a law degree from the Université de Montréal where he played for the Montreal Carabins in U Sports. He chose law because he had an interest in politics and social sciences. He worked in a law firm where he covered everything from business law to immigration law.

“Social injustice, laws, it’s all the same thing, just a fight for those who need to be fought for.”

He’s just one of the latest success stories out of U Sports for the HFX Wanderers. In the crucial 2-0 win against Valour, the Starting XI had five U Sports grads including Kreim and his Carabins teammate Abou Sissoko, former Cape Breton University teammates Cory Bent and Peter Schaale, rounded out with Saint Mary’s Huskies alumnus Christian Oxner. Bent scored his first CPL goal while Oxner grabbed the first Wanderers clean sheet of the Island Games.

“I think it’s important to have these players from big programs in U Sports to help pro teams because I think they have the level to do it. Halifax is 100 percent behind us,” the midfielder said.

Both the CBU and Carabins programs have U Sports championships in the past three years.

“I think in the next years it’s going to be something normal to have a lot of U Sports guys in other CPL teams,” he said.

Kreim will once again be a part of the Wanderers squad in a huge match for the club on Sunday against Ottawa, knowing a win will ensure qualification to the second round group stage of the Island Games.

And again, he and his teammates will kneel for the anthem to show their solidarity with the Black community here in Canada and around the world.