Kicking down doorways: Soccer fields opportunities for immigrant youth
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According to coaches, Latino athletes entering their teens, such as these Berwyn Blazers teammates, begin losing the parent support they received when they were younger. Reasons range from money to culture to issues with legal status.
Chicagoland youth soccer coaches interact with players as diverse and colorful as the uniforms they wear.
But in cities like Bolingbrook, Cicero and Berwyn, the players aren’t just unique because of their size, hair color or personality. Many of the athletes that fill the rosters of soccer clubs in these areas are foreign-born or second-generation athletes. As a result, players young and old have challenges that some of their counterparts don’t.
Less pay, more play
“I understand they come from a different country,” said Oscar Becerra, a Mexican-American who is also director of soccer for Bolingbrook-based Deportivo Chivas. “I was an immigrant too, so I know exactly the help that they need so I focus a lot on those families and support them with anything I can.”
Becerra founded Deportivo Chivas in Bolingbrook as one way to support these athletes and their families, many of whom came to the country from Mexico. The team’s name is borrowed from Club Deportivo Guadalajara, also known as Chivas (the Goats), Mexico’s most prestigious professional soccer team. He wanted to provide a competitive soccer club for immigrants who couldn’t afford to pay for higher-level teams.
Even though soccer requires little in equipment — shoes, shinguards, a ball, shirt and shorts — playing competitively in Illinois can cost families a lot, especially if a player wants to play with one of the highest-level teams in the state.
One of those clubs, the Magic Soccer Club in Frankfort, is the fifth best boys club in the country according to Soccer America’s most recent rankings. But playing for them can be pricey. Over a calendar year, a family could pay up to $1,800 per athlete to play.
“We have a hard problem with trying to keep a balance between business and putting the best players on the field because the best players don’t always equate to the people that can afford it,” said Todd Bailey, director of the boys program for the Magic.
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- According to coaches, Latino athletes entering their teens, such as these Berwyn Blazers teammates, begin losing the parent support they received when they were younger. Reasons range from money to culture to issues with legal status.
The Magic provides scholarships for any family, immigrant or not, who needs it. But Bailey pointed out that even though the team tries as much as it can to help under-funded families, it’s not feasible to help everyone. Deportivo Chivas doesn’t require a fee to play but parents do chip in to pay for field time, the referees and tournaments, an amount very small compared to bigger clubs.
Yet, Becerra sees issues with some families unable, or unwilling to pay for their child’s soccer playing, especially as the child grows older. Some families, according to Becerra, don’t see the importance of the sport beyond a child’s youth. Education in high school and beyond doesn’t seem like a realistic possibility, especially for parents who believe they or their children are in danger of being deported, Becerra said.
“They come with nothing,” Becerra said of parents coming from Mexico. “They start getting something and they don’t want to spend the little money they have on a kid.”
He continued: “So that’s why I think a lot of parents back up because they always have the dream that they’re going to go back (to Mexico) and they don’t want to waste the savings they have on the university for the kids.”
Documentation frustrations
Even if money isn’t an issue for the family, the legality of an athlete or his or her family can also be tricky. Some parents rely on more than one low-paying job and work odd hours in an effort to get work without legal documentation. Even if the parent is very supportive of the child, taking their children to games and practices may conflict with work. Israel Tovar, a coach for the Cicero Mayas, says it’s not unusual for him to help out those parents.
“That’s a constant for me,” he said. “At one point I was picking up six kids to go to practice. Sometimes I have a van full of kids, even for games. Sometimes the other team, they’ll have all the parents there and I’ll show up in the van and eight kids will jump out.”
What’s worse for younger players is when the realities of immigration not only affect their travel to and from practice but also when it affects their home lives. Tovar had an 11-year-old player last year whose father moved to Houston because of issues related to being undocumented. The mother had to work two jobs and his brother was busy hanging out with friends. The result was devastating for the young player.
“His game literally just dropped,” he said “Before, he used to play for his dad. His dad was the one who would come to all the games. And now he had nobody to support him. He had nobody to see him. So every time he would look to the stands, nobody from his family would be there.”
Whether parents work odd hours to make enough money to live or they are afraid of being deported, the young athlete, foreign born or not, can be at the mercy of living life as an undocumented youth.
“We know parents are living by the day,” Becerra said. “They aren’t living by what’s happening tomorrow because they don’t know where they’re going to be tomorrow. They don’t know if they’re ever going to be legal or not.”
Rosa, however, has two children playing for a predominantly Latino soccer club. She has lived in the United States since 1990 but is currently undocumented. She said, through an interpreter, that her odd work hours make it difficult for her and her husband to make it to games or practices. But, she added, she’s never felt handicapped by her legal status.
“I feel the same as any other person,” she said. “I’ll do anything for my children.”
Ricardo Rodriguez, whose son is on the Berwyn Blazers, said in the Cicero-Berwyn area, he doesn’t know of parents who worry about deportation because they usually don’t have their children in soccer clubs.
“Most parents with their kids in soccer are pretty much established,” he said. “The parents that are scared they’re going to be stopped by immigration, they’re not at this level as we are. They’re immigrants that have just immigrated the last five years.”
Rodriguez added that parents don’t necessarily lose interest as their children grow older. They just can’t continue financially supporting their play. He explained that since foreign-born parents tend to have less stable jobs than American-born parents, time and money over many years becomes scarce. He also said the current economy hasn’t helped either.
Losing support
Cicero Mayas coach Tovar observed that foreign-born parent support wanes as the children grow older more often than with U.S.-born parents. Once the children hit the age of 14, parents almost vanish, he said. Becerra, in a similar vein, says the support is really good until the athletes hit the age of 12 or 13.
A possible reason, Becerra and Tovar said, is there is a lack of understanding within the community about the importance of education. For many parents, according to Becerra, college is an impossible goal, especially if the child is undocumented. Why concentrate on education now if many colleges won’t accept an undocumented child, the thought process goes. Even if a child was born in the U.S., Becerra said some parents views college as an impossibility.
But both Becerra and Tovar believe soccer can help some kids get college scholarships and keep other kids focused on school and off the streets, even if their playing careers stop after high school.
“My challenge is to see a couple of these kids on to college,” Becerra said. “Be somebody and be a professional player but at the same time I only don’t want to see them as a professional player. I want to see them as somebody with a career. I want to see somebody that has something.”
Looking ahead
As the players of two U-14 soccer teams took to the field on a cloudless Sunday morning at Morton West High School, their parents gathered on the sidelines to cheer along. The cacophony of voices grew in volume as excited families yelled out encouragement in Spanish and in English, reflecting the diverse backgrounds on the team. If someone wanted to find a lack of support from foreign-born families, they couldn’t find it here.
The road for foreign-born or second-generation athletes may never be completely smooth—even for American families it sometimes isn’t. But the coaches know there are plenty of parents like Rosa, who hasn’t let her status affect the support of her child.
“The most important thing is that I make sure my child studies,” she said. “And that he’s in some kind of sport and to go ahead and advance his studies and be somebody.”
