First taste of soccer brings kids, parents together with schools, community

There are 15 languages represented at Cleveland Elementary – but as Principal Stacy Stefani realized recently, there’s one that’s universal.

No matter what words they use to describe the sport, these kids know and love soccer.

So despite a blustery mid-April morning, 50 students and their families were there for the first game of the Cleveland Soccer League.

“It was super windy, but it was a good turnout, and we’ve got high, high participation,” said Stefani, a first-year principal at the east-side Sioux Falls elementary school.

As she walked the sidelines at Frank Olson Park, she talked to the families and realized it all meant a lot more than the chance to score a goal or block a shot.

“There was one mom who said, ‘I’ve lived in Sioux Falls 20 years, and there’s never been an opportunity for my kids before,” Stefani said. “It’s the beginning of something.”

It’s something that started last fall in the Riverside neighborhood for second through fifth graders at Laura B. Anderson Elementary. The Riverside Soccer League was so well-received that this spring it expanded to three more leagues. In addition to Cleveland, Terry Redlin Elementary plays at Meldrum Park and Garfield Elementary plays at Spellerberg Park.

“There’s something fundamentally unfair about giving kids in the suburbs – my kids and grandkids – an automatic opportunity to play soccer,” said Randell Beck, retired publisher of Argus Leader Media, who went on to co-found South Dakota News Watch and now has “suddenly become a soccer commissioner.”

Beck’s foray into youth soccer started with Roberto, a student he mentored at Laura B. Anderson and a “phenomenal soccer player” – at least on the playground.

“His life is so complicated, his single mom works a couple different jobs, and Roberto has to take care of a younger brother, and they don’t have the capacity to send him to Dakota Alliance,” Beck said. “He doesn’t get a chance to play, and that seemed wrong to me. I tried to set it aside and move on, and it just kept rubbing me the wrong way. This is really for Roberto.”

Roberto is now an eighth grader getting ready to attend Washington High School. Beck just had lunch with him and told him how the effort had grown.

This spring, along with 80 Riverside players, the broader league counts more than 250 students who will play on Saturday mornings across the city until mid-June.

“And more importantly, moms and dads getting to know people and gathering around their parks, and I just can’t think but great things come from that,” Beck said.

Great things already have.

“It happened again and again,” Beck said. “People who have lived in the Riverside neighborhood for four or five generations meeting refugee families who have been here a matter of months or years for the first time and learning from each other and building community.”

Beck partnered with Tamien Dysart, co-founder of Think 3D, to help recruit coaches and begin to roll out the league citywide.

It led to a project from Leadership Sioux Falls, where Dysart’s colleague Bri Vande Pol is a member of the current class, and whose members helped spread the word in neighborhoods that the league was expanding.

“The league itself is going to be so instrumental to change and community in Sioux Falls,” she said. “I thought it was a no-brainer to bring this up as an idea for our service project.”

Leadership Sioux Falls held block parties in the neighborhoods with activities, snacks and, most importantly, information about how to sign up for soccer.

“They were so excited,” Vande Pol said. “They had heard happenings of what was going on at Laura B. Anderson last year, and I think all wanted it for their kids and wished there was a way their kids could participate, and as soon as they heard it was coming to their neighborhood, everyone was super excited.”

That hasn’t waned.

“The community is engaged,” said Eimi Cloutier, a school liaison with the Sioux Falls School District who has worked to connect kids and families in multiple schools with the league.

“This is the first time we’re building a community. Before, we had to reach them, but now they come themselves, and they want to come to school. Attendance is going up. They want to come even when they don’t speak English. They want to come and be with us.”

After the games, the leagues and sponsor Feeding South Dakota provide a meal for the kids and families, providing another way to encourage them to get to know one another.

“We need things like this, the togetherness from the community and the parents in the school, and this is really reaching out to them to say we care about you and the students,” Cloutier said.

The effort has “sort of revealed the best of Sioux Falls,” Beck added. “Everybody from the mayor to the superintendent to the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation to the United Way has rallied around this idea.”

Scheels donated all equipment for the league. Everyone from high school students to the Sioux Falls police chief has volunteered to come out and coach the kids. Volunteers from churches help serve meals. Businesses including First Premier Bank, Vern Eide Motorcars and First Bank & Trust contributed to the effort.

The hope is soccer might serve as a bridge to other involvement for the families, Stefani added.

“In their home countries, some of them are taught not to be involved in school and defer to the school as the leader, and they understand and trust that, so it’s understanding cultural barriers and saying we want you to be part of the school and part of activities going on inside and out, she said. “I think soccer is going to open up avenues for other things.”

The hope is to expand soccer to all the district’s Title I schools, Beck said.

“We’re working on rolling out additional ones in the fall, so it’s an amazing thing,” he said. “Who can argue with getting a girl or boy out there playing soccer on a team for the first time in the lives, learning how to win and lose, and give their best. And those are important life lessons. They’re getting a taste of that, and it’s a great thing to witness.”

In neighborhood tucked out of sight for most, links to brighter future are being formed