The numbers don’t mean anything. Not the 50 years, not the final scores, not the cumulative sums of families served and participation trophies handed out.
What matters is Greenhaven Soccer Club’s steady presence as a community unifier, the glue that holds people together.
For a half-century, the soccer club has taken children shy and awkward, children blessed with athletic grace, children who would rather pick daisies, and kitted them out in kelly green shirts and shorts and brought them together for weekend celebrations.
The club does this without scandal, despite a few coaches who think winning matters to 8-year-olds and some parents who see recreational soccer as their child’s ticket to Stanford.
I know such people exist because I saw them when I was involved with Greenhaven Soccer Club 25 years ago.
Thankfully, I saw many more people who didn’t obsess over scores and scholarships, people such as Beth Koster, a Greenhaven soccer volunteer for 17 years who serves as club president.
“We have an amazing, kind community,” she says. “Other soccer clubs in the region look at us and wonder how we’ve done it for 50 years, but it’s really all about this community. That’s who we are.”
The attitude Koster describes is found beyond local parks crowded with about 1,400 soccer kids each Saturday, July through November.
It’s found in the Fourth of July parade down Windbridge Drive, where the soccer club provides logistical support. It’s found at Christmas, when the club organizes a toy drive and hands out 2,400 gifts.
And it’s found at signups, when families pay from $95 to $160 for their kids to play soccer. Prices rise as players age. But money is no barrier. “We never turn a kid away for lack of ability to pay,” Koster says.
Decades ago, I joined the Greenhaven soccer board and coached teams in the under-6 and under-8 age groups. Ignorant about coaching, I recruited my friend Bert Terry, a retired British professional player and coach who all but introduced soccer to Sacramento in the 1960s.
Bert was California’s top youth coach and Rio Americano High School’s coach for 18 years. His strategy for our Greenhaven kids was basic. “First they kick the ball,” he said. “Then they chase it.”
Our team was the Billygoats, named for the Chicago newspaper tavern. We didn’t keep score but always lost. The only time Bert got mad was when an opposing coach planted a kid next to our goal, taking sneaky advantage of the no-offside rule.
“That bloody coach is teaching those children to cheat!” Bert shouted as he marched onto the pitch. I thought Bert might deck the bum.
Bert died in 2017, age 91. I think about him whenever I see kids playing soccer. He knew the game’s value. He always put kids first.
Beth Koster knows this, too. She says, “Kids want to feel like they matter. These events put them at the center. It’s all about them.”
Happy 50th, Greenhaven Soccer Club.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
