Competitive youth soccer can leave kids of color behind. Tacoma club trying to change that
Several years ago, Christina Lorella-Kuzu was at a breaking point. She was trying to pay for her daughter, Olivia, to play competitive youth soccer for a team in North Tacoma. The dues were $1,200 per year. That figure didn’t include the cost of uniforms or travel expenses for tournaments, which quickly added up.
But Lorella-Kuzu desperately wanted the best for her daughter. While playing in recreational leagues would remain an affordable option, Olivia was too talented to play in those leagues, at that point. She wanted to play against players of comparable skill level, who worked as hard as she did and played with the competitive edge that she had.
“When your kid gets to a certain level, talent-wise, you have to consider what opportunities are available for them,” she said. “It wasn’t appropriate for her to play at the recreational level.”
So the family scraped together some money. They reached out to relatives, asking for a little help. With multiple kids and the costs mounting, it was always a struggle to make it work. So when Olivia was invited by some of her bilingual classmates to play for South Tacoma United, Lorella-Kuzu was relieved.
South Tacoma United, a merger between the South Tacoma Soccer Club and Tacoma United, is Tacoma’s oldest youth soccer club. Between the team fees, travel and uniforms, parents generally pay somewhere in the ballpark of $800 per year for their kids to play on the team. The nonprofit organization’s broader mission is to make competitive soccer affordable for all families and kids, particularly kids of color.
Most of the coaches are volunteers, like Vicente Lemus, who moved to Washington from Mexico in the late 2000s. He’s the coach of STU’s Evolution, a team of 12- and 13-year-old girls. This team is ranked the No. 3 youth soccer team in the state, behind Redmond-based Crossfire Premier and Washington Premier, based in Puyallup.
Evolution recently won a regional tournament (winning games 10-0, 5-2 and 5-0 against teams from Issaquah, Snohomish and Oregon) and will be competing in the U.S. Club National Cup XX in Commerce City, Colorado, from July 16 to 20. The girls are hoping to bring the national championship home to Tacoma.
“I’m really excited to go to Colorado and compete,” said 12-year-old Mary Rodarte, who is Native American.
Rodarte said it’s a fun, laid-back environment with this team. Teammate Monserrat Lemus, 13, agreed.
“The really big teams, they can play, but they don’t really get to goof off,” Lemus said. “We can still have fun while playing good, and I think that’s what makes this team really fun.”
The Evolution team is composed of girls from many different ethnic backgrounds. Lemus believes that leads some teams to overlook them.
“I feel like a lot of people underestimate us just because we’re not all white,” she said. “We’re not all the same race. So it’s really funny to just see their faces, once they see that diverse teams can actually be good.”
It’s a success story, but in the United States, it’s not the norm.
A HISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION
Northeast Tacoma resident Doug Andreassen, a 65-year-old who graduated from Stadium High School, has long been involved in the youth soccer scene in Washington. He has served as the president of Washington Youth Soccer, as well as being involved with leagues in Pierce County. He also served as the chairman of U.S. Soccer’s diversity task force from 2007 to 2012.
For years, he’s seen the struggle that kids and families of color face in trying to play competitive soccer in Pierce County.
“The discrimination against Latinos was shocking,” he said. “From people, opposing coaches, soccer groups, they’d tell me that the Latinos play dirty. They’d file complaints with local associations. … They’d say, ‘We want to see the birth certificate for that kid.’ No one had ever asked me for birth certificates before (for the white kids). If you’re on the (Latino) side, how do you think that made them feel?”
He’d witness Latino coaches attempt to secure field usage from local school districts. Usually, all the forms were only in English, which wasn’t the first language of many.
“They’d sign a form not knowing they committed themselves to paying $1,000, $1,800, whatever it was,” Andreassen said. “I’d go to the school district and tell them I understood the obligation, but make the forms in Spanish. Spanish was becoming a dominant language in our community, so let’s just put the forms in Spanish. The blockades to the Latino community were numerous.”
Demanding birth certificates was common. Parents would claim they were concerned a player was older than he/she claimed, but often, the claims were thinly veiled attacks to try to expose undocumented immigrants.
Frankly, Andreassen didn’t care if kids were undocumented.
“In U.S. Youth Soccer, there is no rule that says you have to be documented,” Andreassen said. “Nor do we care. As a youth organization, all we care about is kids playing soccer. If the kids are undocumented, that’s not a question we’d ask. Did I know some kids were undocumented? Sure. But we’re not a police agency. … We just tried to make the field level for these kids to play, and make them feel welcome in our county.”
In the late 2000s, Andreassen said, one local league tried to ban anyone from speaking any language besides English on the field. Parents would complain about Latino families having parties and gathering to eat food after soccer games. They’d complain about their music.
“One time, (a parent from another team) said, ‘I’m going to call immigration and they’re going to take you to Mexico,’” Vicente Lemus said. He took the high road, responding that he’d be happy for the opportunity to visit his mom.
Referees still tell the girls not to speak in Spanish on the field.
“It really does get me mad,” said Monserrat Lemus. “They’ll tell us to stop speaking our native language, which is kind of messed up. There’s a lot of racism.”
PAY-TO-PLAY REMAINS AN ISSUE
It’s expensive to play for top-tier select teams that play in the Elite Clubs National League (ECNL). The annual dues to play for Washington Premier, for example, range from $1,700 to $2,500 per year, covering the costs of coaches fees, association and league fees, facility maintenance fees, referee fees, etc. The cost doesn’t include uniforms or team dues, which include the cost of entering national tournaments, airfare, hotels, etc.
Two of Andreassen’s kids played for Washington Premier. He estimates he spent over $10,000 per year, per kid, to play for the program.
“It’s an incredible number,” he said. “And it’s never going to go away in this country.”
For underserved communities, paying anywhere close to that amount is not realistic. It leaves high-level, competitive soccer accessible mostly to predominantly white, affluent families who can afford the costs.
“I think it becomes pretty apparent when you go and watch soccer at those high levels and you look at the level of diversity,” Lorella-Kuzu said. “You can see the sport has become an environment that caters to people with money. They are people left out that more than likely have a great deal of talent.”
Washington Premier, which is also a non-profit organization, is not alone in its costs. Clubs like Crossfire and other ECNL programs have similar costs. Most of the clubs do offer scholarships and financial assistance to families who can’t afford the full cost of the programs.
“We have a financial aid process,” said Seth Spidahl, director of coaching at Washington Premier. “We probably hold out about 100 grand a year to families of need. Most of the families are families of color and Hispanic families. My philosophy with our club is that we don’t ever want money to be the reason why a child can’t play.”
The ECNL clubs pay their coaches and have facilities they own and maintain. They have bills to pay. Still, Spidahl knows youth soccer programs in the United States could always do more.
“We’re working hard to provide a great experience for kids,” he said. “We’re always looking to make soccer better and cheaper.”
Over the past decade, the ECNL has expanded in the Northwest, adding more teams across Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Washington Premier and other local teams travel for national tournaments less often now. Before, seven to eight flights a year was normal. That number has been cut about in half now, bringing the overall cost down a bit.
“The league understood it wasn’t sustainable,” Spidahl said. “People can’t afford getting on airplanes seven times a year.”
The scholarships from Washington Premier and other clubs are well-intentioned and in many cases, do allow kids from low-income families a chance to participate at the highest level. But even with financial aid available in some instances, kids of color are slipping through the cracks. Many assume playing for the top clubs isn’t an option for them. Many aren’t being noticed by colleges and ultimately, the United States national teams.
Andreassen estimates the U.S. is missing “thousands” of high-level, talented players because of the way the system is constructed. Unable to afford the prohibitive costs of club soccer, many young Latinos in the United States turn to church leagues, community centers or local adult Latino leagues.
“After all my research, I estimated there are probably 10 to 12 million Latino kids playing soccer that were not registered with U.S. Soccer,” Andreassen said.
Lemus does not have the coaching licenses required by ECNL clubs. But he draws on a background of playing high-level club soccer himself, in Guadalajara, for his coaching.
“I knew how to coach and how to train,” Lemus said. “I thought, ‘Let’s try to make a team and charge the least we can.’ That’s how we started. My first team, we always practiced two to three times per week. If we couldn’t get a field, I said, ‘That’s fine, we can practice in a public park.’
“I don’t get paid here, but I’m OK because I can help the players be at the same level as their players without charging them a lot of money. … I think soccer should be for everyone, not just if you have money, you can play.”
Now, the Evolution team will compete for a national championship. They’ll play three group stage games in Colorado. The winners of the two groups will meet each other in the final.
“They are very excited,” Lemus said. “It’s the first time for everybody to go to a national. It’s the most important tournament in their lives until now. They think we can win the tournament.”
Evolution will be underdogs, but they’re used to that by now. For Lorella-Kuzu and other parents, it’s been a joy to watch the girls triumph.
“There’s been times we’ve been pretty close to tears when they’ve overcome obstacles they didn’t think was possible,” she said. “It’s so joyous to see the underdogs win something they deserve to win. When they show off their skills, they’re able to outplay people who have put so much money into it. These girls just put their hearts into it. It’s incredible.”
Want to donate to South Tacoma United’s fundraiser to assist with the team’s travel expenses? There is a gofundme, which has raised over $16,000 of its $25,000 overall goal.
This story was originally published July 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
