The coming of fall doesn’t only mean the leaves turn colors;
for some, it also signifies the beginning of the soccer season — an hour or so a week of disorganized ball chasing, a frustrated
parent-coach, orange slices at halftime and, of course, end-of-season pizza parties.
But for some young players, soccer is a considerably more serious — and expensive — endeavor.
“It can cost up to $5,000 to play on a highly competitive soccer team,” said Kelly Ward, Oregon Youth Soccer Association director of Administrative Services.
For some of these players, soccer is a ticket into college. Ward
said if a player wants to get the attention of a college recruiter, he
or she has to be in the Olympic Development Program, the state’s most selective soccer team. Besides making it through the team’s highly demanding tryouts, players often have to fork over $1,000
in membership fees just to play for the team.
“The older you get, the more expensive it gets,” University soccer player and former OYSA player Katie Abrahamson said. “You have to market yourself … and you have to play club soccer if you want to play in college.”
Abrahamson, a junior from Portland, said she remembered traveling as far as Phoenix and San Diego to play in tournaments when she played for an OYSA club team. For a typical weekend tournament, she’d have to pay for hotels, airline tickets, food — “everything that goes into a four-day weekend,” she said. She also spent the summer before her senior year writing college coaches to encourage them to recruit her.
Not surprisingly, many families find that they can’t shoulder
the burden. OYSA provides scholarships for those who find the costs too steep.
Ward said soccer can be too expensive even for those who don’t have aspirations of playing in college. Some families have difficulty with the $150 fee required to play recreational soccer in the fall. Fortunately, OYSA provides scholarships for these players as well. In some leagues, up to 80 percent of the players are supported by scholarships of some kind.
Additionally, the OYSA assists people in inner-city and rural communities start soccer clubs of their own through a program called Soccer Start. Without this program, Ward said, children in these areas wouldn’t have the opportunity to play soccer.
Former Oregon Youth Soccer Association player Katie Abrahamson, now a junior, says she wrote to college coaches to encourage them to recruit her.
Another program OYSA sponsors is TOPSoccer, which provides opportunities for children with disabilities to play soccer for free.
The program also provides them with specialized equipment, such as larger balls, so that these children can reap the same benefits as other children.
Soccer has many peripheral benefits, even for those who don’t have college aspirations, Ward said.
“The way (OYSA) looks at soccer is … when (players) are challenging themselves, they’re developing as an individual their self-esteem and their fitness,” she said.
Abrahamson said playing soccer has made her a better student.
“It’s helped me to organize my life,” she said. “I have to prioritize my schoolwork and other activities to stay well-rounded … It’s helped me be disciplined.”
Soccer can indirectly help a student get into a university even if he or she will not play college soccer, Oregon United Soccer Academy President Tom Macha said.
“It’s the factor that may keep them focused so they can get into college,” he said.
Macha added that soccer has simply kept many players out
of trouble.
“Without that they would have had a lot of free or unstructured time and that wouldn’t do them any good,” he said.
In the end, Abrahamson said the most valuable benefit she has gained from soccer is the relationships she has developed.
“The friendships … have kept me in this game,” she said.
