“¡Vamos papi!” I remember myself yelling as I saw my dad running around the soccer field. When I was a kid, Sundays were reserved for soccer. Before I started having my own games on the Cliffside Park soccer traveling team, I was a regular fan at my dad’s Sunday league games (at least when it wasn’t too early in the morning…).
I don’t know what Sunday soccer leagues are like now, but back then, they were something to take seriously. My dad ran several teams over the years. He’d get the uniforms and coordinate with the leagues. He was the one making sure he had enough players to field a team every Sunday. He’d drive an hour to pick up a star player who didn’t have a ride to the field and then another hour to drop him off.
I knew my dad liked playing soccer, but it’s clear that there was so much more behind these games. These games brought together friends from all over to have fun while working toward something together. In many cases, it was one of the few breaks they had from their daily work responsibilities. More importantly, getting on the field on Sunday helped keep the flame of their culture alive.
COMPETITION
Most of the time my dad played in restaurant leagues, where restaurants would field teams of staff and friends. Their team names were the restaurants they presented. During the games, the players were all business. Pride and bragging rights were always on the line. I got to admit, they were pretty vicious with each other! Winning was everything, and they did everything they could to win. They pushed, slide tackled, and pulled anything they could to get an edge. It was clear the rough nature of the game was something they all loved about it. This was the game they grew up with, regardless where that was.
COMMUNITY
After the games, competition gave way to community. They shared food, music, jokes, and a lot of fun. It makes sense. Although they were on different teams, something that united most of the men on the field was their immigration status. Many of them were forced to migrate because of the conditions they faced in their home countries. These games helped recreate the homeland they left behind. Their U.S. lives could have been completely different from what they grew up around, but they could count on soccer as the consistent presence in their lives.
(The featured image is of my dad playing on one of his teams years ago)
