Soccer Program Promotes Community Education

As a Duke University alumnus who hails from eastern Washington, I have been surprised by two things since I arrived at the ends of the earth: One, Washington Apples beat me here, in abundance! And two, despite the enthusiasm our host community shows for soccer, no one is taking advantage of the opportunities youth sports present to mold young athletes’ character into a positive force to benefit society.

I have always greatly admired Mike Krzyzewski’s passion and success as a basketball coach, but it wasn’t until I read his book, Leading with the Heart, that I understood his intentionality in his relationships with his players. Most strikingly, he wants to see the young men he coaches develop into men of good character. In my childhood, rec soccer, little league baseball, distance running, and especially high school wrestling all played formative roles in shaping who I was as I left the Pacific Northwest to attend college in the southeast. When I read Coach K’s book in the weeks leading up to my first stint as a head coach myself, his perspective resonated with me. I believe young people can greatly benefit from the character development opportunities that come with competitive sport.

It was the fall of 2015, while my family and I were home for a few months that my oldest son signed up for soccer, and I volunteered to coach his U-8 rec team. Having mined the principles Coach K laid out in his book, I applied them to the eight first-graders entrusted to my mentoring, and we had a great season. It was early the next year that we returned abroad, and I began a youth soccer program that has grown from one team (coached by me) to 22 teams made up of 200 elementary school boys and 50 girls, each club with their own coach.

I am a development worker in community education in our host country, and the youth soccer program is undoubtedly our most visible program in the city of 40,000, where we live. The children love to play, the coaches love the paycheck, and I would like to believe the principles the soccer school is founded on will impact this community for generations to come. Each of the past three years, the local coaches have helped me select and then train one or two all-star teams for several additional months beyond the regular season. They participate in a youth world cup tournament, the first stage of which is a province-level tournament. In 2019 our team was province champions, and in 2020 we placed third, both of which were good enough to punch our ticket to the Regional Final in the 5th largest city in the country.

Concepts like teamwork, respect for authority, discipline, confidence, and perseverance are ripe for the picking, whether on the basketball court or the soccer field. They can be applied for the rest of our lives regardless of the arena in which we find ourselves. The children we mentor here may or may not realize their dreams to become professional soccer players. Still, I am thankful for this opportunity to play a role in seeing these principles taught by those I mentored and caught by boys and girls who will grow up to influence their community for generations to come.