Neighborhood soccer effort expands with multiple community partners

By Mick Garry, for Pigeon605

For five Saturday mornings in the spring, Neighborhood Soccer in Sioux Falls fills eight city parks with opportunities to get to know each other.

Kids in grades 2-5 from eight city elementary schools, their families, volunteer coaches and assorted folks who live nearby – Neighborhood Soccer delivers on a lot of feel-good stuff – gather to give children a taste of sports participation without trying to get too crazy about the competitive elements.

Photo by Travis Gallipo

This Empower Sioux Falls initiative is “building families, relationships and neighborhoods while closing the opportunity gap for kids,” according to the organization. Its success in achieving that might be hard to measure, but you know it when you see it.

“Realistically, what we’re doing is not really about soccer,” said Callie Schock, Neighborhood Soccer director. “It’s about building up communities. It’s about giving kids an outlet.”

It’s an effort that has expanded in participants, in neighborhoods impacted and in the level of engagement within the community – which now includes churches, schools and an extended list of local sponsors.

Recent proof of that arrived recently in the form of a $75,000 donation from Tim and Nancee Sturdevant that provides meals for each league on Saturday mornings.

“Supporting this collaborative, community-led program appeals to us because it addresses the opportunity gap in a meaningful way,” Nancee Sturdevant said. “Whether it’s the soccer game or a meal shared among neighbors, Neighborhood Soccer creates a more connected community, and that helps our kids thrive. Tim and I are pleased to be a part of it.”

The league meets weekly at parks near participating elementary schools from 9 to 10:30 a.m. The schools are paired with neighboring churches, which supply volunteer administrative support. Participating schools have federal Title I status, meaning they have the highest levels of poverty in the city. 

Photo by Travis Gallipo

It’s an effort that began at Laura B. Anderson Elementary with help from Oak Hills Baptist Church on a spring Saturday at Mansor-Pioneer Park in 2021. Empower now has added seven more school-church-park combinations.  

Participation begins with about 650 children each season, Schock said, and grows steadily toward 800 by the final weeks. The 2026 spring season ends Saturday, May 16.

Organizers intentionally keep the structure simple and predictable. The play-practice-play format lasts 90 minutes and allows time for educational skill-building, soccer games and lots of running and kicking the soccer ball around.

“Every site has a lot of different volunteers in different areas,” Schock said. “We make sure we have a handful of coaches who really know the game and know how to teach it and know how to work with kids. We fill in the rest with a mix of parents, older siblings and people from the neighborhoods who come out to see what is going on.”

Via partnerships with soccer-heavy groups like Dakota Alliance and city high school soccer programs, they’re able to bring out a lot of high school players as well. 

Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum is one of the coaches and has been a huge supporter of the program both publicly and by showing up to work with the kids.

“From my perspective in law enforcement, I see programming that targets kids and a huge growth potential and impact within those programs,” he said. “I knew it could have a massive impact on kids in our community. Plus, it’s just really something I wanted to get involved in and try to help raise the collective consciousness of our community. Service matters. Service makes a difference.”

Photo by Travis Gallipo

When the soccer sessions are done, everyone hangs around for lunch that is now pretty much on the Sturdevants.

“What we want to do beyond the soccer portion is to bring families and neighborhoods together to get to know one another,” Schock said. “Over the years, one of the things we’ve heard from our Title I schools is that sometimes families really aren’t connected – they don’t know each other.”

The initiative represents an on-target attempt to get past those barriers. People are getting to know each other.

“At the lunch, we’re seeing parents exchanging phone numbers and handing out information about Neighborhood Watches,” Schock said. “We’ve seen a Facebook page that is devoted to our original neighborhood. We’re just trying to build a community that starts with something as nonthreatening as sitting down and having a meal together.”

More than five years ago, LSS mentor Randell Beck, a former Argus Leader Media publisher and longtime ardent supporter of the LSS mentor program, was meeting regularly with a student at Laura B. Anderson Elementary who was considered the school’s best soccer player. 

Beck asked if he could attend one of the boy’s games and was told there were no games – the boy’s soccer reputation was built on recess and trips to the park. 

Eventually, Beck applied for a grant through the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, and the first neighborhood soccer league was launched. 

“There were 75 kids and their families at the park every Saturday,” Schock said. “The school noticed less absenteeism – kids were wearing their soccer shirts to school and talking about soccer. Just a huge success.”

The word gets around on those kinds of successes. Schock was brought on to direct the program, and the schools involved jumped from one to three to six and now eight. 

Schock is always looking for more coaches and volunteers. She reports that the retention rate is high once volunteers make their first visit. They tend to get hooked after they see what they’re getting into.

The local police chief can be counted as a member of the group that is hooked.

“You go to one of the locations and you will see family and friends watching their kids play soccer,” Thum said. “You’ll see neighborhood churches supporting the logistics – serving food, helping with player registration. Then the last couple years, we’ve seen even more high school players come in and take on the mantle of coaching. Put all that together and we have a multigenerational investment, right? High school kids coaching, senior citizens helping with logistics – it’s a neighborhood initiative that rallies people together and directs them toward a common cause.”