Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #687: The science of quality, accessible youth soccer with Anees Merzi

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Merzi founded the 703 Warriors, a free, high-quality youth soccer program in Arlington, Va. He joins Belz to talk about how it got started, how he runs training, whether what he's doing is scalable and some of the nitty-gritty challenges and triumphs of the work. Check out the 703 Warriors YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@703warriors And their website: https://www.703warriors.com/ Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast when we talk about U.S. Soccer. Our guest today is the founder of 703 Warriors, a free soccer development program in Arlington, Virginia. The project is geared to give young players a chance to really grow in the game, even and especially when their parents can't afford thousands of dollars in fees. It is a fascinating project, and the founder is Anise Mercy, a graduate of West Point, a military veteran, and a volunteer youth soccer coach at the forefront. of what I'll call the science of accessible high-quality youth soccer, a pressing issue for the sport in America.

Anise, welcome to scuffed. Oh, thanks so much, Adam. I really appreciate you guys having us on. Can you give us the lay of the land? How did you decide to start 703 Warriors? How did you do it? What is it? You know, kind of just give us the basics here.

Yeah, I mean, it really started from a passion of mine. Something that I felt when I was growing up and experienced personally, I got lucky where things worked out, made it to high school. Football coach came up and said, hey, son, what are you here for? I was like, I'm going to go for soccer, you know, when I get back into it. And he said, no, son, this way. Football's this way. And, you know, football took me to places I wouldn't have gone otherwise,

namely college, we mentioned West Point, played there. And, you know, the opportunities that were opened up for me from sports is huge. So I always said, if I have a chance to do something about it, I'm going to do it. And it just so happened to be, you know, in 2023 when I was able to do something about it and kind of formalize something I was doing on the side anyways. It's like just for, you know, I have kids also, just making basically play dates for a bunch of kids. You had a big text group like, hey, if anyone wants to come out, we're going to be over here. Let's just go play and have fun.

And so I saw these kids that continue to come out, kids that would be walking with their scooters or just walking by the parks and saying, hey, can we jump in? And I was like, hey, there's something here. let me try to formalize it, give it a chance. And if it doesn't work, there's a reason why it doesn't work. Because, you know, there's a reason why no one's doing it because it's impossible, right? Like, that's why no one's really tackling this issue. And, you know, I love to dive in more about my personal background or anywhere you want to take this at him.

I mean, so first of all, how many kids do you have? How old are they? Yes, so we primarily served ages of seven. No, I mean, you personally, you said you have kids of your own. Yeah, no, my kids, sorry. My oldest is 11 and the youngest is 8. Okay, okay. I mean, that's a big part of it.

Like, people don't usually get into coaching youth soccer unless they have a kid in it, you know? Which I feel like we could change, you know, it could change. It'll be a positive change, right? If, like, people could, if there was actually like a culture of, like, I'm going to go help these kids learn how to play soccer, even if I don't have kids. But it's not really like that yet. So, yeah, answer the question that you were going to answer, which is, like, like how many kids are in the program? Across all our programs, we basically serve ages 6 to 12.

And, you know, in our first year, we served over 400 kids and in the competitive soccer program. So we can dive into some of the programs we offer free to the community. Let's do it. Let's just dive in. Let's dive in. Let's go. Okay, cool.

Yeah, so that's kind of the big number is representative across all the programs. 400 across every program that you guys have. Yes. And we have four programs that we serve the kids in. It kind of starts at a foundation. It's a model that we came up with, right? The foundational piece is youth development. We have these kids that come in that may or may not have certain skills around respect,

emotional control, you know, other things like financial literacy, right? Like we're exposing them to things with other nonprofits that's beyond soccer, right? And this is things that people can get behind. You know, like we have one coming up this Sunday. You know, you have girls on the run, Travis Manning Foundation, the police department. you know, all these, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, all these people are coming out with their expert knowledge and imparting that knowledge on the kids.

You know, how much do they learn from two army guys coming out and teaching land navigation? I don't know, but at least there's some exposure to things that they wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to. That's that foundation that we come in and bring for the kids. And as they kind of work up the ring, kind of this funnel, you get all the way to the top, which is a competitive soccer program. That's our smallest program, but it's because it's selective.

It's very expensive to run the program. We're trying to prove something. This isn't just a wreck thing. And we need people to show up and commit, regardless if it's free or not. So that's kind of the telling of the programs. And in between is kind of the filler. So you have street soccer, which is once a week on Sundays. Kids come out.

It's an organized pickup games. Basically, we split the kids up, give them pennies, and they rotate through different fields that we set up. And the next level up is kind of the individual skills. It's called Community Fitness Program. That's where the kids learn about how to move their body, agility, footwork. Basically, all these things are upskilling them if they have the aptitude to get there to the competitive soccer program. So how many competitive teams do you have?

So we have six on paper. And I only currently take four to the tournaments. So I'm very honest with the parents. You know, they say, hey, how come my kid doesn't go to the tournament? How come we're not doing this? It's like, well, look around. There's only four from your team that are here. You know, like, I don't want to have a heart attack when we go to a tournament.

Also, I don't want to feel like we're wasting the donor's funds, right? These are just things that I don't want to do if you're not in it. I can't, you know, I'm not even asking parents to meet me halfway. I'm just asking them to meet me somewhere. And if you can't do that, I just can't do the tournaments. Like, each tournament is $1,000. You know, like, this isn't like, hey, let's just maybe if you feel like showing up, come out, and maybe we can play. This is like you want and see this opportunity for your kid and you put in the little effort,

whether that's at the very least texting and saying, I have to work a shift in the morning, but I can be in the afternoon. Can someone take my kid? That's the very least I expect. I don't want, oh, I didn't show up because I had some shift and then we had a church thing. It's like, you know, let's figure this out. You know, let's take it serious like you're paying for it because I feel bad, like, although it's not my money personally,

I feel very bad about wasting funds, and I take it very personal. Yeah. Yeah, so the, maybe it'll help for you to tell us, like, the pathway for, so you have a six-year-old shows up to what? Street Soccer would be the first thing they would show up to? Youth development is our entry program. What is, does this youth development? Is that like, is that more like Boy Scouts or is there a soccer component to that?

There is. So Arlington soccer, a big club in our area, a big club, you know, across the U.S., but very known in the DMV. Yeah. They're a huge supporter. So Frank's been awesome over there, the executive director. And they support our youth development program. They'll bring out a few coaches. It's also part of our pathways program.

So once they graduate from our program, where do they go? Success looks different for us versus a club like our. than soccer or other pay-to-play clubs. And I can dive into that, you know, after this. But like, that's kind of the piece that runs. So it's about one-fifth of the programming is soccer. Everything else is, you know, go talk about how to work as a team. What does it look like when, you know, you're having problems and you want to punch someone

in the face? Like, you know, that's not acceptable as a kid. It's not acceptable in the real world. There's people you're going to encounter that you just don't agree with. with like how do you manage those emotions so those are kind of the things that's only once every two months that's where i broadly advertise what we're doing because that program is a snapshot of everything in one event and then parents all i'll talk to them and say if your kid is interested i watch them like they have some they have some skills would you like to check out our program and i give

them the rundown we kind of lower the barrier you know people ask a mom came up to us last night and said, hey, how do I register my son? I was like, just come. Like, we don't get formal until your son makes it to the competitive team because that's when I need the birth certificate, all the stuff for the player card. I said, otherwise, I don't care. We have this thing. If you keep coming, we have like this waiver for, you know, just in case your kid gets

injured or something. But that's like as formal as we get. You know, I don't want to make extra paperwork for folks. Yeah. Okay. So that community, that youth development piece, what's the hook for the kids? Like, I'm a six-year-old, seven-year-old kid. I don't want to hear about why I shouldn't punch somebody in the face.

That's no fun. Like, let's do something. Like, because, you know, like six-year-old soccer practice, where I live, you're like trying to trick them into getting good at soccer, you know? You're like, it's a big scam, you know? Yeah, yeah. So what's the hook for that youth development thing? Why are kids even showing up for life lessons?

I mean, soccer is the hook for all of this. So it's a bait and switch like you talked about. You know, someone says, hey, come for pizza. And then, oh, hey, by the way, here's the programming we really wanted to give you. It's the same thing. Come for soccer, but really stay to build that confidence, the character. And that's kind of what we preach or tell the, like, advertise to the parents. is, hey, there's soccer, but this is beyond soccer.

This is life skills that when we talk about our mission is going to help your kids break cycles and win it life. Like, I'm just going to be honest. If you want that, that's what's happening here. If you don't want it, there's five clubs within a five-mile radius of where we practice. Take your kid over there. Or there's rec. If you need help, I'll sign them up for rec.

Let me help you out. Like, it's not a problem. I'll show you all the forms. You have to fill out for free rec soccer. That's, we're really honest. You know, I'm not here to, you know, it sounds it sounds weird to say it I'm not here to do a charity but I'm doing charity but in the sense of I want to do for the kids that if you just gave them a chance man they would be great at soccer

like that's who I'm trying to serve I'm not trying to serve just come out and pick flowers and let's go slap hands yeah that can happen in the youth development program if you want to move up the rings if you will to competitive soccer it takes a different mindset it's things that I didn't learn until high school or beyond of like you know if you really want something you're not happy about playtime, you're practicing on your own, right? You're not going to go tell your mom and say, hey, mom, can you go complain to the coach? How come I didn't play like everyone else? You put in the work.

You show up, you say, mom, I need to be at practice. Today's Tuesday, remember? Can you get me to practice? These are things that I'm trying to teach them that are going to be important for them, regardless if soccer's in their future. So they go to the youth development, like once every two months. Some kids shows up to that. And then you might, what would be the next step, the very next step?

Is there a rec soccer component to 703 Warriors? Okay, okay. No. So, Arlington Soccer runs a rec program also. And so that's an easy. I just tell them, hey, if you just want to play soccer, they have once a week practice and once a week game. Super easy, accessible, you know, like, go to that.

And you can come, you know, you can come to our stuff. We do three days a week for free of training, right? like that's a lot of training for free and not even close to what rec offers, right? So I give them the laydown of here's your options. We love for your son or daughter to stay, but this is the options. We want you when you come to us to be fully committed, not just show up once a month or whenever you feel like it. Yeah, okay.

Now, I think what people may not understand from the conversation so far is just how high quality your training sessions are. And you can see a lot of this on YouTube. Like, it's, you've posted a lot of video from training. I love some of these videos because the methods are excellent. Like the kids are engaged. They're playing hard. You're talking, but not too much.

And what you're saying is useful stuff. So I wonder, is that just, are those videos just the competitive teams training? Or is that just, is that everybody? Like, give us a sense of what some of those videos. Like there's one where you're, it's like a 2V1 attacking drill. You got a defender coming off the six. You got a goalie and two kids trying to attack. I really like that one.

So is that, is that the, just the competitive teams practicing or is that, is that everybody? Yeah. I mean, any of the videos we take is probably just from competitive, the competitive program. Because it's, it's less kids and it's easier to take videos. I would love to take videos of everything. But I would say any of those kids that are looking good, like are probably on the competitive teams. You know, I'll talk to the parents and kind of give them an ultimatum of like, look, I'm doing this for free. You know, you don't have to pay anything.

We need your son on the team. Like, what's the barriers here? What's going on? Like, how can I help? Like, I'll pick up kids. I don't care. You know, like, or we have WhatsApp group for every team. And so I'm trying to make a community, not just, hey, we play out.

on the same club. It's, oh, I live in the same building as this person. I can take him today. Can you pick them up, though? I got to go to work after that. You know, like trying to make like a whole community thing to really power this because otherwise this thing won't work. I mean, we had one dad in the last tournament, took seven kids in his, uh, his mother-in-law's van. And the team only has nine on the team. It's like, you know, like if that didn't happen, the team is not, is absent, you know? Like, these are things that we deal with that no one sees when we show up. They're just like, oh, there's a bunch of kids that we normally don't see, like, coming out. Like, that's their first reaction, like, the kids from the park.

You know, there's a lot of race. I'm sure you hear some of it down in Georgia. But, like, it's pretty bad in Virginia. Maryland, not so much, or D.C., but you do get some pretty racist comments that have come our way, which it is what it is. I try to tell the kids, like, because I feel like they look up to me as a father figure also. Some of them come from single parent backgrounds or their grandma is the one that brings them to stuff. I try to tell them it's like, look, we're not going to be able to fix their behavior

or the way that they're saying things to you. But that's always going to happen in life. What you need to do, I tell them something my mother taught me, you put the blinders on. You don't deal with anything going around. You focus in. The game is here. Once you start looking around, you are off the field. Just come sit with me. I tell them, just come hang out with me. You can come out and look around, watch the other game. But if you're on the field, we need you on the field. So these are just things we try to teach them as just general life skills. That's a hard one with kids, man. Getting them to focus.

Do you ever get, do you ever get like so annoyed with them on that front that you, that you're mean? Yeah, I'm an ass. You know, like I run practices like football coaches, if you ever look, because the kids we're working with, there's a reason why football and basketball coach a certain way. Not to generalize all football and basketball coaches, but there's a piece. of respect, loud, you know, accountability, things that I don't normally see in soccer. You know, I haven't been exposed to every soccer ecosystem, but I haven't seen a lot of that in the U.S. I see a lot of kids sitting crisp cross applesauce in line. Perfect. Looks like a beautiful harmony.

Everyone's doing story time. When I see our kids, it's a, it's literally chaos. I mean, last night, a new parent came and she's like, man, that's chaos. Like it was like a zoo, basically. And she's the first parent we've ever gotten that can afford travel soccer, but her son's half black, doesn't feel like an inclusive environment and says, we want to try your guys this broken out kind of thing. And we welcome anyone. It doesn't matter if you can afford it or not. We just ask anyone that can afford it if they can help in other ways, right? Like maybe if you're here every practice, you mind running a station? No problem. You're there anyways, right? Or you work at Capital One, you know, maybe there's some sponsorship thing.

We can work out. Again, these are things that strategically, how I set up the program, how we want to run it. But yeah, we really run it like football. Like, that's a lot of things I took from football is these are the kids we're serving. There's a reason why you run it like that is because otherwise they're not going to listen. Like, it is what it is. They're just not going to be, they're not going to have that level of respect that you can expect from other kids. Can you say more about that? How, so what does that mean like football? I never played, I never played organized football.

I don't know what a football practice looks like. It's like a lot more like structured or? Yeah, yeah, there's structure, but it's organized chaos, right? Like people are flying around, coaches are screaming. They're holding you accountable. You mess up. They're going to embarrass you in front of everyone. You know, like they're going to call you out and be like, dude, if you don't want to play, get in the back of line.

If you're in the front line, you're taking a rep. You know, if you don't want the rap, let someone else take it. We want to get better for Saturday. Right. Like these are the way coaches are talking. It's not, oh, it's okay, Johnny. Let's all sit and talk about it and, you know, talk about our feelings. You know, it's like, dude, Johnny, if you don't want to be here, I've told, I mean, last night, I even said it.

You don't want to be here. Go home. Like, this isn't it. There's a playground outside, too. You want to go play on the playground. Go play on the playground. We're trying to get ready for the next tournament. You know, I hate losing.

You know, it's like, I hope you don't like losing. We're going to lose if everyone's not locked in. You know, like, we're going to lose 10 to 0. Teams will beat us 10 to 0 if they could. I don't know how bad it is in Georgia. But, like, there's a level of competitiveness where teams want to win. And then there's a level of, I'm paying $4,000 from my son. You guys better not even being close to whatever the hell they're going to produce

because it just doesn't sit well with me. And I also pay for a private tutor, you know, for you. Like, you guys better go embarrass them because they need to go back to the park. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, so any other tip, I mean, I'm just so much in the, in the throes of this. Like, how do you establish a fast pace to training? How do you establish, like, how do you establish a culture where everybody's locked in?

And like that kid at the front of the line who doesn't, who's not paying attention, which holds up the whole drill, like, how do you, how, any other ideas on, like, how do you do that with a bunch of kids who they're there? They want to play. but maybe they need some encouragement to take it seriously. How do you keep that pace up? Yeah. I mean, we do have, I think there's a good balance because I come with a very aggressive energy

and mostly volunteers that do come out are women. So I think there's a nice balance, not to say all women are softer or anything, but they bring a different aspect to the game or to the coaching where they will pull kids aside and give them the motherly touch of, hey, look, let me explain it to you one more time just so when you get up, you don't get embarrassed again, basically.

This is what's happening. Once you finish a drill, you rotate to this part. You got it? So I think it's a nice balance of having the person holding you accountable and you being embarrassed of like, I don't want to mess this up again because I'm going to get singled out. And then the let me come to the side and look, man, this is what we're doing. You know, you got it? Let's try again.

So I love that we have a good balance. You know, I personally don't like to be mean, but I just recognize what, worked when I was coming through, you know, football. And I was like, man, that worked some reason. Maybe I need to bring that. And then the military aspect, the same thing, right? People aren't nice in the military. And there's a reason why they have highly effective teams that, you know, trust each other as brothers, basically, is because of the way they were brought up together through this tough love, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So you have no paid coaches, zero, right? Yeah, no paid staff.

and so how let's talk of i mean the reason i ran across you i had heard of 703 warriors but i saw this um pdf on the u.s soccer website where the that's called no no trained coaches no problem which really speaks to me because i'm doing some not exactly the same thing but some similar stuff so how let's talk about how you managed to ensure quality training sessions with volunteers uh like how do you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you that. What's the secret here? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sit here and like, you know, say, I'm the secret. But I think a person that is very similar to me, maybe is trained, right, knows how to run a practice for one team can easily run this pool thing because now they're not

focused on one team. They're focused on rotating and ensuring the drill is ran to their standard, basically. So you mentioned, you know, like a 3V2 with the goalie having the ball. The goalie throws it out, you know, throws it really high. They have to control it. Basically, the scenario of catching the ball in the box type thing. And how do you put it away before the two defenders kind of get on you? Like, uh, that, that just, it just comes back to, you know, ensuring I go and say, you know, what, I didn't like that rep or, hey, let me tell you real quick, hey, watch out for this. Like, I'll talk to the coach, you know, or in this case, the volunteer. Like, hey, just watch out for this. And then I'll correct it on the spot. And then I'll leave and I'll go to the other

station. And there's only five stations, depending on the amount of kids. Roughly 10, we try to keep it at 10 kids per station. Last night, it got a little bit out of hand. There was like 15. But like, so, so it's hard, you know, but we do run drills where they're moving. You know, the, even with the 3B2, you have basically six kids on the field with the goalie. And so that's, you know, it's about at least half, especially we have 15. And they're rotating, right? So they're moving from thing to thing. We also try to tell them if you're in line, watch what's happening because you can learn from someone else's rep. You're not just waiting, like, looking at the sky and, oh, I'm at the front of line, you know. So we try to keep them engaged.

But going back to your question, it's the ability to have someone that is trained and knows what's supposed to happen, be able to walk around through the stations and help if a volunteer needs help of like, hey, you need to adjust that cone. Like move them further out. Or this age group is a little bit younger. let's adjust the drill to just like a 1 v1. There's not a lot of kids today. So that's kind of what I do when I go to those practices. Okay. Yeah, you have the station,

so the volunteers only have to focus on one thing each practice, right? Exactly. This is their one thing they do. The thing I run into is if I run over to a station or like a little field and fix something, I feel like Murphy's law is just 100%. in effect. Like if something can go wrong, if something can be done in a slightly improper way, it will happen. Do you find that?

Like, I mean, all the respect in the world for the volunteers really appreciate their help, right? But man, it's like every single practice. Like, why do we have seven people standing in line when we could just move seven of them over here and do it like right here? Do you find that? Yeah. Like, you've got to, like, be so attentive to the details. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, you do.

It gets better, you know, especially as these people continue to come out, right? I don't have to worry about them. You know, I would say maybe after like the fourth time they come out. You don't have to worry about them. They're like, I got it. I'm doing the 3V3 drill. Three guys on, 3V3 and then three off, right? Like, and then whoever scores, like king of the court, right?

Whoever scores stays on, losing team gets off. You guys go play monkey in the middle on the sideline or whatever until the next, you know, until you get back on. Like, I think it takes maybe like four or five. sessions before I'm comfortable with barely even checking in, but I'm still going to check in. You know, I'm going to be very hands-on and make my rounds. And you know what's also nice is it put some ownership on the kids. Like, how seriously do you want to take it? And that's where you naturally find some of the leaders of like, hey guys, come on. Like, we're trying to do this.

Why are you in the middle of the drill? We're trying to start the drill. You guys are just standing there. Like, get off. And I'll hear some kids like actually speak up. Like, come on, guys. Like, you know, It's my turn. Get out of the way kind of thing. So I think there's a mix of everyone's kind of working together, you know. Kids running through the drill, man. It's like, holy smokes. Get it together, children.

Get off. Yeah, yeah. I'm just like yelling. You know, I have a big voice too. So I'm literally yelling across the field. I can see it's like, why is that station not even going? Like we already like two minutes in and you guys are still like putting pennies on. Like I went off on some guys yesterday, the oldest team.

they took advantage of one of the girl volunteers. She's literally in ninth grade, right? You know, she's just coming out for some credits for her classes, right? And I come into the gym because we actually have a gym space too, which is huge. So we have one station in the gym and then the other four outside on the field. So I come in, I look inside and I see through the window, like they're just messing around, like throwing their pennies and like totally taking advantage of them. basically.

I'm just like banging on the door because they don't let us pop the door open. So I'm just like banging on it. And you can tell they're already like getting into like getting their act together. I open the door. I just like go off on them. And then I just slam the door. And I asked the I asked her afterwards. It's like how'd they do?

She's like, oh, they were awesome once you yelled at them. I was like, you know, so some of these things I don't feel, you know, it's not like I get an enjoyment out of going and like yelling at kids. But I know there's a certain level that needs to be done to hold them accountable and take it seriously. You know, a lot of parents, I imagine, tell me if this is true or not, but it sounds like a lot of your parents are working class parents and like what's their view of their kid getting yelled at to, to straighten up, you know, to take something seriously.

Is it positive? Is it negative? No, I wouldn't say it's overwhelmingly positive. Some people would just leave and I'm just like, this isn't for you. You know, like, okay, it's your choice. and I'll talk to them if they don't speak English. We have other folks that speak Spanish. I'm like, you know, there's this one kid that was crying.

Not for me yelling, but for me telling him to go in another group. And he's like, no, I want to be with this. This is my age group. And I put him down a level because he's just not good. And I was like, no, just go. We need to crossload. Like that group doesn't have that many. He just go over there.

And he ran off crying because he knew what I was kind of saying. He's like, yeah, you think I'm not that good because you're sitting me with the younger kids, even though it's a year up to a year. younger, he just sees it as like, oh, that's the babies, you know? And he goes and cries to his mom and I asked one of the dads like, hey, can you tell her in Spanish? Like, come on, you know, like, don't let this get you down. Like, you need to pick yourself up and keep trying. Like, don't give up. You know, you can get back. We just needed to crossload people and I had to pick the weakest link, you know? Yeah. It is what it is. And so they haven't come back. So, you know,

I'm not here to tell you all success stories. But like, I think the ones that do get it, They get it right away. And then the ones that don't are like, what's this guy's problem? You know? Like, I'm going to go somewhere else. And a lot of the single,

the ones that I will tell you that I've noticed that really enjoy it are like the single moms. It's like my son needs someone to get in his ass, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, I feel like where I live, you know, kind of the tail end of Appalachia, I mean,

parents want me to yell at their kids more, you know? Oh, nice. And I don't know that that's necessarily, a great thing, but it's just interesting. They like, they want, they want, like, a stern coach to come in and, like, get things going. So you've written that overstructured training is creating robots somewhere, kids who follow instructions but can't think on the field. How do you balance running a competitive travel program, which demands, like, you got to, if you want to win on Saturday, you've got to do. some like structure and kind of like

off the I'm thinking about like goal kicks off the goal kicks we got to be real righteous about how we do it but how do you balance that with like street soccer philosophy you know yeah yeah it's like a zoo right going from a zoo to a perfectly well

oiled machine right and I mean one of our our 2017 team they made it to the final in the last tournament in Maryland and they got throttled in the final because the team was very robotic, methodical. No one, if you put one v1 of all of our players, they would destroy the other team.

But because they can blindfold and go like this, turn back and pass sideways and switch the ball, and know that guy's going to be over there right on the sideline, and he's going to dribble it up the sideline, this guy's going to run, and he's going to cross it, and they're going to score every time, right? We played one of those teams, and we just got throttled. And so what I look at us like,

I'm just looking at when it really matters, who's going to win, a kid that just can only receive the ball, turn, and pass it, or a kid that understands I can take that guy 101 because I have to. The other team is spread out now because they know how to play defense. I'm going to have to take that guy 101 and then look for the pass. So I over index on the thing that really matters first that you can't really teach later. I can always teach a kid spacing and how to pass the ball.

What you can't teach them is the confidence to say, I just got the goal kick. I'm doing the build out. I'm not just going to boot the ball because I don't know what the hell to do. I'm going to be able to make a decision, pretend that I'm going to boot it, fake the guy, go up the field, take space, and now I'll pass it. That's what I prefer. And some people are like, man, you should tell the kids to pass more. I'm like, dude, I'd rather them learn like the skills of dribbling.

And if they lose the ball, I'll talk to them. But at a certain point, I prefer them to be a little bit of a ball hog just because I know those skills are just hard to come by as they get older, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's so fascinating because that's, you know, that's like the, that's the sort of consensus view at U.S. Soccer, too. Did you know that? I mean, where did you come across?

Did you just learn that from experience or did you like learn that from some classes? But like ball control first tactics when they're like 14 or 15 is the, I mean, that's, that's what they're teaching in the coaching classes, basically. Oh, nice. Yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, that's, it makes sense to me because that's how I think. And then I see it. I mean, I see the teams.

I'm like, those kids really that good? Or they just know how to pass the ball around, hopefully get like a fast break and the one or two kids that are really good on the team, they get the ball and they score it. It's like, is that a team or is that get the ball to our best player? And we're going to put it in the back of the net. I don't know. These are the things that I think about when we run our training.

And street soccer, as you called out, like, it's very fluid. It's creativity. It's when I look around the world and say, how is soccer? do you see a bunch of columns with coaches or in a whistle or do you see a bunch of kids just naturally playing with all different age groups and that's how they learn right you look up to the older kid you say oh how is he always open what is he doing oh when all everyone's crowd over here he sneaks off and leaks to the right the ball bounces out it comes over to his way and he goes and shoots it like you know we're hoping that they naturally learn the game uh in these in these street soccer um you know

in the street soccer program and have fun right it's all about the creativity and having fun in that day. As you have explained, you guys run travel soccer completely free by relying on community partners and sponsors. What does the fundraising look like? How much time are you spending on that? Who are you talking to? Yeah.

I mean, I would say it's less time spent on fundraising and more time spent on sponsorships, which I think for the long run, for the long run, that's what's going to take it. It's not going to be some mom and pop shop that gives us $1,000. That's going to just get you tactically to the next day. It's not going to get you to. What I really want to do is I want this thing to move on with or without me. That's my first goal. The second is to create other local chapters.

So I specifically call the 703 for the area code here with the idea that you can deploy this as a local chapter in another area, you know, 305, four years, whatever, and take it from there. So I can't do that if we're not strategic. right the whole let's go talk to the italian store down the street like it works for today's funds but it doesn't work long run so when i talk about partnerships it's with other clubs right a tournament if you take four teams to it that's four thousand dollars if you have a partnership with a club it's zero dollars or it's 50% off right like that is fundraising if you think about it because now we're spending weight less on things um the other thing is sponsorships for the uniforms right the uniforms aren't expensive, but, you know, $50 or so per kid can add up very quickly. So getting those

sponsored is kind of the biggest fundraising thing I focus on. And then we have local partnerships with the different community foundations in the area. That helps raise a lot of money for us. And some of the corporate sponsors are slowly coming, but those are a long burn. You know, that's going to take, that's going to take some time to establish. But everything I look at, is more from the strategic lens of worst case, you know, we can scale down a few things in the short term so we can kind of succeed and have this thing kind of grow legs and move on in the long term. Is it scalable though?

It sounds like you're at practice, what, three nights a week? Yeah, because we don't do, we don't do league games. So everything is three days a week, you know, regardless of a league game. You figure a traditional pay-to-play club, right? probably two or three practices a week and maybe one to two games on the weekend. So let's just say four to five days of soccer. We're doing three days of soccer. I asked the families to come out at least twice out of the three.

It's doable, right? Like, it's not crazy. And then we go to the tournaments. And then a certain number. How many tournaments a semester? So we're on track. We're on track to do seven tournaments this year. So we have one coming up in May.

This spring or this. entire the year. Sorry, like starting from August. So our training goes from, in the tournaments, go from August to the end of November. So like Thanksgiving. And then we come back in January till the end of June. Okay. So that's when I say a year, it's that.

We don't look at it like seasons per se, even though there's seasons in there. So if you wanted to break it down by seasons, just say like three tournaments a season, I guess. I see. Okay. And that's all the games they play. Exactly. Yep. We've tried to do some friendlies with other clubs.

That's hit or miss during that same time slot. We've played like a Springfield, S.Y.C. They're really well-known club also. They've come out. Villarreal's club has come out and done a friendly with us. We're trying to do something there, but that's not really scalable. Going back to your word of scalable. It hasn't worked the way I thought it would work.

So it's okay. Why? Why do the club-friendly is not where? That seems like it's easy to set up. It is. It's hard to work around schedules because we're probably the most flexible because we don't do league games. Everyone else has league games.

They're getting ready for tournaments. Finding pockets in between everyone, basically why it doesn't work is everyone wants to play us the same weekend because everyone's off that weekend. So that's the reason why it's not like something you can do throughout a season per se. we've been looking at running our own tournament also a free tournament maybe to do fundraising going back to your fundraising question we're doing like a run we're starting like a run thing there's a partnership we have with some folks that do a golf tournament so I think that's how we'll do kind of the day-to-day fundraising is through these annual you know big bash events

but yeah that's that's kind of the piece there Okay. Yeah, let me ask this. I do want to go back to the scalability question because it sounds like you put a lot of energy and passion into this personally and you got to a certain extent you got to be there to make sure practice is humming.

Oh, yes. So how do you, I mean, you can try to rep, you can replicate the model on paper but how do you replicate you? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's things I fight through all the time. It's like, you know, our oldest team, the team I started with, the pilot team when we started this thing, we got them up to, they were like ranked 23 in Virginia, like absurd. You know, like 23 out of maybe 1,000 teams.

I don't know how many teams are in Virginia, but like that is absurd that we were able to accomplish that with a team of kids from the park, you know, on it like, whatever. when I handed the team over to a woman, basically, they've gone, they're like 79 now. And they're playing like really good teams. But I think going to your question of, I feel like there's energy that I'm bringing. A lot of the kids on that specific team don't have dads. I don't know. I fight through it. I try to set up the schedule of the tournament to try to stop by.

But I am not able to because they play on like different fields. and it just doesn't work. So I feel terrible for them. She's doing a great job. It's just you need that, you know, that father figure there. So I've asked other male volunteers to go. One did go in the last tournament and they did pretty well. So I think there's an aspect of they're not respecting her because she's a woman

and they need kind of that male figure, even though this guy's not a dad or anything. He's just a man, right? I think they just need that presence there. If you look at their sideline, they have three women on the side. sideline, three moms. That's their, that's their crowd that comes to the game. You look at the other sideline, they have 50 plus people, grandmas, the whole family's out. So I think they need that person that sticks up for them and they know that's going to be in their corner. And so, so I do agree with you there of like, how do you replace that? I think it's fine. When I think back,

I'm like, it's still a success that they're still ranked that high. It's just not like what we were doing, you know, top 25 type thing in a very soccer rich area. You know, like there's a lot of talent that comes out of this area. For sure. So, yeah. So that's one piece of it is like that kind of bothers me. Let me jump in, though. I guess that's interesting about how they're doing in the tournaments and stuff.

But what I'm more interested in is like the training, you know? The training three times a week, it sounds like you are absolutely critical to the quality of those training sessions. How do you scale something like what you're doing without, you know, a thousand in these mercies all over the. all over the country, because that part is, that part is so crucial. I know this. You've got to have somebody there who is like, no, we're not going to sit down and chat about it. We're going to do work here.

We're going to get better at soccer. And you might think, I mean, I've had the, I've had this happen where I think like, oh, this guy's going to like really make this practice hum. And I turn my back for 15 minutes. I look over there and I'm like, holy smokes, what is happening? Like, I thought this was going to be great. And it's not like everything's going wrong over here, you know? So how do you, I know this is a really hard question,

but like how do you scale something that is, seems like it's kind of like personality dependent to some extent, you know? No, I agree. Yeah, no, it's definitely fair. And how we've seen it is like, what I've come to the conclusion of is you need a paid professional. And we're going to have to pay at some point, As we look at, you know, this model of having, you know, there's a lot, if you look around the country, there's a lot of people that raise their hand and say, hey, on Mondays, I run a free soccer thing for the kids.

And they're very passionate about it and they do it. You can turn and see that happening around the U.S. No question about that. What you don't see is the administrative side, the paperwork, all the stuff to actually formalize what's happening there. And so how I look at it is, okay, if you bring kind of, you elevate 703 warriors. to just like HQ warriors. And then you have 703, you have 305. Basically, when I say elevate, you take me out of the picture, put me in the administrative,

try to bring like a team or a staff that runs the player cards, the tournament registrations, the grant writing, all those things, those people are paid. The things to enable someone like me or you to say, you know what, I don't have to worry about all the equipment costs, the goals, the balls, the field reservations. That's all handle for me. Now I get to really do what I really love to do is go out and coach kids. Like that's what I'll do. And so I think the denominator or the conclusion I've come up with is we're going to have to pay some folks.

Like that's just non-negotiable. No one's going to come out with the same passion or energy for completely free. Right. Like there's going to have to be something tying them to it, whether that's a kid that they have in the program or something a little extra of, hey, you know, I'm a trained professional. I can go make X amount of thousand dollars doing this. Like, why would I do it here for free? You know? You know, like it is what it is, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So money is the big thing, man, Adam. And I think we're getting there, but it's not there yet. So I wouldn't say we're completely scalable. I think we're getting to a place of sustainability, which, you know, if you're not sustainable, there's no, why even talk about scalable? Right.

If you can't even sustain what you're doing daily, then how you're going? you get to scalability. So we're getting very close to the sustainability, but it requires getting me out of the picture, basically. Like, Anise can be there if you wants. God bless. Thanks, Anise for coming. You know, we love to see you.

But it shouldn't be, if Anise isn't there, everyone's looking around and saying, what are we doing today? I don't know. Is there anything happening? Yeah, man. In your heart of hearts, do you worry that, like, there might not ever be as good of a practice if you're not there? Well, not practice.

No, I think it's getting close. You think it's getting close on the practice end? Okay. With the volunteers, I mean, because they consistently are coming out and we make it so dumb simple, it's like you're running this game. Just split the kids in half and they're playing a game. Like, how hard is that? The hardest part is getting the kids in order because they like to be on the same team as each other.

You'll see them like take their penny off when no one's looking and like throw it on the side. You turn around, it's like, wait, how can there's 12 on this team and five on that team? So, like, that's the hardest part about that drill. And I tell the volunteers, it's like the hardest part is making sure the teams are evenly split. After that, it's like you drop the ball on good night, you know, make sure there's no fights. But yeah, I agree with it. It's like, I don't think that's what bothers me. I think it's where the, when we go to a tournament, I have a very personal, like, you know,

I take it very personal on how they do because I think it's a reflection of me. Like that's just how I run my life in general, in my normal job. And when I used to go in school, it's like I see it as I'm writing my name on the paper and turning it in. This is my product. And I put my name on that product. So I take it very seriously and personal. So I think the thing that scares me most, and I've kind of done it with that older team, is just let go. I've tried to get back in.

I've put in personal requests to tournament directors of like, can you somehow tie me into the game or de-conflict? and it never happens because they're 9 v9 and everyone else is 7 v7 and those field sizes are a bit different right yeah so they're in different parts of the complex and not even the complex like in different 15 20 minutes away right okay so i've kind of let go a little bit and the 2016 team uh there's a dad that coaches that team and i've let go i mean i show up when i can but i normally i basically coached the 2018 and the 2017 the 2018 won one first place of that tournament the 2017 got second place. So I'm not just sitting here trying to like put myself on the pedestal, but I think there's a level of energy that I'm bringing also for the kids that's hard to replicate and you can see it in the results. But what I'm hoping is I get them enough of a foundation where they can coach themselves. So a lot of things I've been doing a practice of the 2015s is you guys don't need a coach if you guys can coach each other and bring that same energy I'm trying to bring, bring that passion and fire each other up. You don't need me on the field. You know, so I look at it, even my, my oldest son is on that team.

I look at it as like, this is giving them an opportunity to lead, to learn how to lead in ambiguity. You don't have the best directions. You don't have the coach screaming at you on the sideline, you know, joysticking telling you what to do. You figure it out on your own. And when you sit back and think about development, there's nothing better than that of just letting the kids figure it out on their own with, you know, hopefully you equip them with the tools, right? It's a beautiful thing to see them take ownership of a situation. And I mean, it's hard. It's hard to get them there, right?

Like, so a couple quick questions before I let you go. What position did you play at West Point on the football team? So I played left tackle. And then growing up, I played soccer all the way to like 12, like 13. I made a really good team called Surf. You know, Surf's huge now. Are you from California? Yeah, I'm from San Diego.

Okay. I know, San Diego. Another San Diego Surf, shit. Alumnus is the kid who played Stryker had like a, as I think since retired. Sebastian Soto. Have you heard that name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a surf.

He's a surf alum. Anyway. Yeah, great club. Got invited. So we played at a tournament, right? I was playing on the local club. And I scored the winning like header goal. And coach comes up to me after.

gives me like a card back then. He's like, where's your mom? I was like, oh, that's my mom over there. He's like, you come out, try out. It's in two months or whatever. Come try out for us. And they sent us a letter in the mail. Come try out. Here's the thing. I try out. I make the team. We show up to the first training. They kind of give us the, back then it was all paper, right? Here's the brochure. Here's how much things are going to cost. Here's the, what we expect from you. How many times we practice. The different tournaments we're going to travel through throughout the U.S. My mom's just like, holy crap. Like, I work. I can't do. this. And I felt cheated. You know, I felt like this is bullshit. Like, I got cheated out of an

opportunity. I played with kids that, as you mentioned, they played like in top, you know, MLS or whatever. It's like, or they went on at least to college and got scholarships and soccer. And I felt cheated that at age 12, 13 or whatever I was, I think it was 13, that I had an opportunity to play when soccer truly matters, which is that age, I believe, because now most of the kids kind of, you know, the ones that trained a lot, they're not really that good anymore. They go away. And now the real kids come in that actually have like a future in soccer potentially. And so I felt cheated that that happened. I played in the Mexican soccer league.

Just it was once every Sunday's just like keep playing. And that's when I went to high school. And I told you the story about the football coach. And I was like, I can finally get back in a soccer. I'm going to play in high school. And, you know, I was shy back then. He's like, no, son, you're this way. I'm pretty big guy.

I'm six three. So like, you know, football makes more sense. Especially back then, you know, soccer players were not as, you know, now if I played soccer, you know, the height is probably not an issue anymore. Back then, you know, it was a smaller guy sport, you know. Yeah, yeah. It still kind of is. You know, you're lower to the ground. You can kind of do better.

But like, I always felt cheated. So that's why I had this burning passion to myself of like, if I ever get a chance in my life to do something, I want to do it for myself. I want to build the program that I wish I had, you know. I see. I wish I'd asked you about that at the beginning. So I, one other thing, just curious what you think of the change in age cutoffs coming this fall. It's like, it's already kind of confusing, I think, to parents. And now it's like, it's like totally different.

What do you think? Why are we doing this? It makes sense for, right, the middle school, high school ages, maybe even going to college. I don't think it makes sense of the younger ages because you look at a. kid, even if they're only two months, say they're two months older, but they're in the same grade, they're all in second grade, right? But one kid's two or three months older, it's a big difference. Even as you get younger, a week old baby is different than a one month old baby, even though it's very close. It's like, this is like night and day. Maybe that kid's already crawling, right?

I don't know. Right. Like, I think it's a bad idea for the younger ages, but as they get older, I think it makes sense. It's just, it's hard. You know, I, I kind of put my, myself in their shoes. It's like if you want to do the best thing for like US soccer, it's better to just to just fix it back to the great year type thing versus the birth year. That's why I think why they made it. And it's good to have just a standard across the board. You know, you don't want to have like, hey, for the first five years, everyone's like this. And then after it switches, I think it makes sense in that regards. But because we serve the ages of 8 to you know, the U8 to U12, I think we're going to take a hit kind of. Um, I. us personally. The bigger clubs, they're not going to have a problem because they have six teams at each age group. They're just going to re-fuffle people around, you know? Right, right.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm just, every time I see a birthday, I'm like, what, what year, what age group are they going to be in next year? I have to ask Claude, you know? Well, do the grades, right? That's what I'm going to switch on our end is the, what grade are you in? Right. That's basically what it is.

Yeah, right. But then some kids start, I don't know, some kids start. Oh, they get held back or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, with ages we serve, I don't know if being held back happens. Maybe it does. I just haven't, I haven't thought too much into it other than we're going to have to shuffle people around and have kind of new teams potentially next year. Okay.

All right. But it's fine. Anything you wish I had asked about? You know what? We should talk about the pathways. Because a lot of people, they say, hey, that's great. You get the kid to age 12. What's next, though?

Right? Like, what is it? Yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah. So I mentioned a couple clubs. Arlington Soccer, Alexandria Soccer Association, ASA, and Villarreal. And then Potomac Soccer is a new one that's kind of working. I still have to send her a proposal in the background.

But it's not only helping with covering some of the tournament fees, that's one piece. You know, some of them are also looking at supporting, like, the youth development program. Potomac soccer is looking at sending some older kids to potentially if they want to learn how to coach come coach in a low threat environment come on down. We even been said from our nonprofit perspective if you want we don't mind paying like the licensing fees and stuff for the kids if they want to actually do that in their future and they're helping us that's huge you know so like these are other ways to get away from just like traditional volunteers of like maybe someone that also knows soccer and is passionate about it like I think that's going to improve the

quality of me being able to step away of it. Yeah, I love that. I love that idea. So that's huge. Like Potomac Soccer, they've mentioned that. Alexandria also, I even approached Arlington about that. Hey, you have kids that go into your referee program or your coaching program. They can come if they have to do hours or some requirements, just have them come to do with us.

They don't do, they do bad. Who cares? You know, like, we're very low threat for them, right? So that's one piece of the pathway partnership. The other piece is bringing Villarreal back in the mix of, hey, success for us looks like a kid graduates from our program and makes it to one of your teams. That's success. Just like how you look at success and say, our kid went pro. Our kid went to college on a full ride.

Our kid is playing now at some ID session for an MLS, whatever it is. Our success is we took the kid that no one was looking at, got them to a point where they understand that cussing on the field. pouting when they don't get the ball and not being a team player is unacceptable right like we got that kid got them to a state of like a good foundation and then handed them over ready to play on the top team at arlington soccer alexandra you know whatever like that that's what our success is and all four of those clubs have said if we have if if the kids there we'll take them we'll sponsor them no problem like we'll pay full ride like that's that's kind of the the thing we have with the four clubs.

Alexandra has been the best, where the best being they're going to find a home no matter what for the kid. So no matter if the kid doesn't have soccer in their future, but hey, you want to make some money refereeing the rec games? Come on over at age 14. We kind of start pushing you guys out. And we'll give you all the referee gear. You know, we'll get you the training, all that's free.

So this is huge, right? So this is why I say Alexander is probably the best in terms of for the kids because they said they'll find a place for the kid no matter if they're the best or not the other clubs are more we'll poach your talent these ones are we'll take any graduate yeah i see yeah that's great so because you guys go up to u12 and then the then some then the kids would have to find a new place to play or a ref or whatever yeah let's get to middle school you know what the our our worst default answer is they get to middle school with a solid foundation and they find their and whether it's soccer, lacrosse, football, basketball, and they're not significantly behind because they already learned the footwork, all the stuff, the beautiful stuff that you get from soccer, they take that and they either continue with soccer or they go and play, you know, it's something, some other sport or whatever.

Because U12 is the great, like, that is a great age to stop because then after that they are in middle school and they can try out for their school team or whatever. I love the idea of having older kids coach. That's something I've been thinking about here. And yeah, we'll see how it goes. It works, man. I mean, you'd be surprised. We have a middle schooler. He's 13.

And he's coaching. And sometimes he plays, too. Because our oldest team is pretty good. Even though they're not that old, they're like 11. They're all turning 11, right? He plays with them. And like, he's basically coaching while playing. which again is something that I see around the world.

It's like the guys are kind of teaching the younger kids how to play by playing. They're also playing together because they want to win. So they're like, hey, man, like, why are you bunching up? Like, go forward. I'll send you a long ball or whatever. Like, I think these are things that they learn from people that are like stewards at the game, you know. So he, his brother is on our oldest team. And he comes out.

I'm like, dude, you might as well. You're here anyways. He plays for the middle school team. He's really good. He's a kid that I wish we could. could have caught, you know, earlier. He does wrestling in middle school also. But, like, it's just great to give him this other avenue.

And you'll see other siblings kind of play, too. Just like, I don't tell anyone you can't play. You can come on out. I just tell them if their parent comes to me and says, oh, can they get a jersey? Can they go to the tournament? It's like, well, where are the other kids? You know, like, if you have a bunch of kids, connect them with me, let's get it going. But I can't, like, I can't want it more than you.

you know, at the end of the day, I don't want to have a heart attack, you know, because we don't have enough people showing up for the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That thing about jumping in on the drill, that's something I've really been noticing lately. If you want to drill to hum, if you want to exercise to hum, get in it, you know? Yeah. And that's great that the 13-year-old is helping out.

All right, Anise, appreciate you taking the time to explain some of this to us. I'll put links to like 703 worry all the social media all the websites in the show notes for anybody who wants to learn more. It's a very cool organization. Any closing thoughts from you? No, no. I mean, I just appreciate, you know, we're, we bring this other thing that we're trying to teach the kids, this piece of gratitude, not everything's free.

And you got to earn what you get in life. And this is, this is beyond soccer. And these are things we're trying to teach the kids. So I try to live it too, and I wanted to express that, you know, our gratitude for you having us on and thinking about us. Because these are things that we try to teach the kids. It's like there's not a lot of people that hold doors open for you. And if people do hold doors open, you're very thankful. That's the least you can do.

And so as a closing, I just wanted to express, you know, on behalf of the club and all the kids is our thankfulness for you, you know, telling our story, helping us get the word out, spreading awareness. because that's what really runs this community and how we're going to get to that vision is by everyone kind of just doing their part, gripping hands and saying, you know what, let's actually take action and not just complain about this on Facebook. Like you see everyone on Facebook, Instagram,

everyone pay to play, blah, blah, blah. It's like, what do you do about it? Right? Like, what do you do about that today? Oh, I went on and I'm a keyboard warrior. It's like, okay, you know, where's your kids at? Or what are you doing? Oh, I coach a training session

and I charge $100 per kit. It's like you're complaining about the problem and you're contributing to the problem. You know, so these are things I just try to bring back to the kids of like, you know what? Refocus to yourself. Do what you can do. You can't control everything going around around you and just be thankful. It's going to take you a long way. That's awesome.

I got to tell you something real quick. I was at a coaching class in Atlanta, U.S. soccer. And I was the only rec soccer coach in the room. Everybody else was, you know, working at a club, a pay-to-play club. And the instructor goes, well, how are we going to fight pay-to-play? And I was like, well, I got an idea. You guys should all coach Rex out. I didn't say that.

But, you know, it was like, people were saying a bunch of nonsense. I was like, I mean, what do you, what do you mean? How are we going to fight pay-to-play? Everybody here, coached at a club that is pay-to-play. go coach Rex soccer or do what you're doing. So anyway, yeah, I'm with you on that. We'll get it little by little. Like, we'll get the funds and we'll be able to, you know, the thing for this to move forward,

it's not everyone completely free, right? You're going to have some folks that are going to have to be paid. But in a way that makes sense because they're so flexible, we see it as if you're a coach, your livelihood is, you know, from coaching, you're not getting set back by coming. You're just basically giving back and being competent. to state it for your time. And it's not some salary thing. It could be a contractor to 9-9. And you're still coaching at those other clubs. That's your main thing. But once a week, you're over here with us coaching. Or you have carved down on the calendar this tournament, you're going to go coach the team.

Otherwise, you're coaching your team every other, you know, all the teams you coach over there that get paid for. Like, I think that's another avenue for us. It's just some of these things are just, they haven't come into fruition. Like, it's going to take time. And I'm willing to put in at least one to two more years to say, is this a place that could be sustainable and scale? Or is this a knees steps away and the whole thing dies on the spot? And that's what really bothers me. I don't want to step away. Yeah. But yeah, we'll get there, man. But yeah, if there's anything, you know, we could support down there. We're talking with some guys from Dallas. Three, three, guys down there. They're looking to do something similar. They have already in place the operational

side. They just do not have the, we can't find fields. We don't have money to get jerseys for the kids. The tournaments are paying on the, you know what. So that's why I think this really could work is if you solve the administrative problem. If you solve that, I think there are enough people that are willing to do the day-to-day thing of, you know what, I'll make sure the kids get to the games. Like, I'll do that. You know, I'm from the bottom of my heart. That's the least I can do for this community. I'll make sure I'll get my van and we'll throw them in. Like, I think that could happen. The hard part is how are we going to raise money? How are we going to pay for fields?

How do we reserve fields? How do we work with clubs? How do we get the nonprofits to come in and support us? And I think with all the strategic foundation we've laid with this pilot that I'm doing with 703, I think it would solve the really challenging problem of it, which is administrative that no one wants to do or is passionate about doing. Yeah, that stuff is annoying as hell. Do you ever think about like just going to like a rec pay format where it's like 100 bucks a month? Is that, not 100 bucks a month, 100 bucks a year?

Yeah, yeah. Is that, is that going to be too much for some of your families? Or like what? Or how much difference would that even make to the operation of the organization? I think, you know, so when I started not to be hard-headed. Like I was saying I don't want to charge anything and I'm not going to. going to take a paycheck. Those are two things that are non-negotiable. If I have to sacrifice on any of those, I'm just going to close it down, redistribute the funds we've raised to other

nonprofits and just call it a day. So from my hardheadedness, like, I don't want to charge anything. I don't think it would change too much. The other thing that I have is leverage. You know, when a parent comes up to me and says, hey, how come my kid didn't play that much today or they didn't play equal time? Like, what would happen? Like when they're, when they kind of join the program and they come to a tournament. I could easily. tell them off and be like, you know, how much did you pay again? You should be thankful that you're even fucking here. You know, like, I'm just being honest with you. Like, you're not paying anything. You look over there, all those guys are paying $3,000 to just register their kid. Just not, that's just

a start. Don't talk about the uniforms, the traveling. We're doing all this out of the kind of some of my heart. We're trying to win at the end of the day and prove something. And last time I saw your practice was was a month ago. I can't work miracles. I'm not Jesus here. And I like, this isn't what I'm doing. You know, like, so I think the leverage comes from me not charging. I can basically run it exactly how I want to run it. And I don't have to answer. I do have to answer to people, right, to donors, to the parents. But I have a little bit of leverage of I'm not getting paid. I'm here to do something good for the community. And you're not paying a dime, you know? So if you're not happy, there's the door. I'm sorry, there's the door over there. I really want, I really want something

special for your son. I hope you're seeing the opportunity that they're getting. If you don't see it, I can, I don't have room for negativity because it's going to impact me. I'm going to lose my passion of what I'm doing for free on my own time. You know, I don't want to rub numbers in people's faces, but that's kind of the leverage I keep because I'm not charging. And I don't think that would change anything from a sustainability perspective. What it will change is potentially people, that we do have people that get poached from our teams. So we've lost, I think the number is 19 now, kids that have gone to other clubs and play on the other clubs.

One really hurt me hard at the last, the last two tournaments ago in Arlington, actually. The dad, he texted maybe like two months ago, hey, we might not be able to come back until March. I was like, what's going on, you know, whatever. He's kind of like being around the bush. And then I was like, well, can you make it to the tournament? It wasn't in February.

I was like, I know you're probably busy. know the weather's crap, like there's, you know, a footsall, whatever. And maybe you can come at least to the tournament, because we really need your son. And so he's like, yeah, I talk to my son. He wants to come. Two weeks before the tournament, I kid you not. I get a text and WhatsApp. Oh, something came up. What do you mean? Like, maybe you can only make it like one game or like the whole weekend? Like, what happened? Oh, now, we can't make it anymore. So I was like, okay, whatever, man. Like, if you can, I have to take you off the team because now you're wasting donors funds. I registered your son for the tournament, like the player, you know, like all this stuff is money.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you're taking an opportunity for another kid. So I took him off the team. We show up, I kid you not. We show up to the tournament. This dude is on the top team for Arlington playing.

And I'm like, are you kidding me, dude? At least level with me, you know? Just be honest. Like, I'm an honest, fair person. Just be up front. Be like, hey, they came and talked to my son. They talked to me and they said they want to put them on the team and they're not going to charge us. that's why I created the program.

I didn't create it for you to just willy-nilly come here and there. So going back to your $100 question, I think if we did charge something, we would have less of those 19 people leaving because they feel like they've put something in the program. They're not just using us as a stepping stone, basically. So I think there are some challenges with not charging because people don't feel like,

oh, I paid even if it's a dollar, right? It's like you kind of have some tied to it. And I've combated like, in my mind back and forth, I battled through the concept of like, how do we make them more committed? Is it a contract they sign? Do we do something about it? I haven't actually done anything about it. And I think it's okay.

I think setting up these partnerships, like formalizing them, has been my first action of, hey, guys, look, we have this partnership now in place. If you're a kid graduates from our program and it's good enough, they're going to get picked up by the team you really want to go to. And you're not going to have to pay. You know, like I'm trying to kind of dangle that in front of them now as a, as a, hey, stay with us kind of thing. And I think it's working. But I can't tell you for sure because I don't have enough data points on it. I just feel like in my gut, I think that's working where people see kind of the light at the end of the tunnel, if you will.

You know, in our area, like probably other areas, people have the bumper stickers on their car, Arlington Soccer, I'm better than you. The kids at recess, you go around some of the schools, especially in the more wealthier areas. all the kids playing on the soccer field have their gear decked out no one everyone else feels intimidated to play because they're like i'm not part of that click right yeah like there's a lot of politics and stuff going on so you think of some of these people like they're chasing that brand that vision for their kid because they think that's what's best for their kid not realizing what we're doing is actually what's best for their kid inclusive environment kids that look like their kids are out there you won't see that in the other you know in the other thing it just doesn't happen until they get older, right? You get to the age 13, 14. You start seeing some of the ethnicities come in that should be playing also. And I think then it's a more inclusive environment. But early on, it's very much like a click, you know?

Yeah. But yeah. But yeah, hit us up if, you know, I'm willing to test the concept out with others. You know, especially if you're already doing like operation stuff. Because I do want to elevate kind of the nonprofit to be like, the administrative staff front office type work, those people are paid. And then you have the people that are underneath.

There's going to be like, we do stipends for the volunteers. You know, they do gas, meals. We have one that wants to do coaching. So we told her like, hey, if you want, like, do the coaching license. We'll pay for everything. So there's things we're trying to do to better the system. But like, I'm open. Like, we run this thing on the fly.

So if there's other things that you come up with Adam or others, we're open to testing it out. What's the worst that's going to happen? It doesn't work. Okay. We didn't have anything before. Let's just close it up. It doesn't work. So that's kind of how we run everything.

It's like if something doesn't work, we shift and pivot away. It's very much run like a startup. Well, it just strikes me listening to you talk. Every situation is different and different in each community, you know? Like we have a rec program. People pay $100 a year to $100 a season to play. To me, that doesn't seem like a lot to ask of people. And then we give them at least at some of the age groups a little bit higher quality rec program than they might get, you know, down the road in another town.

And then we run into this problem where there's like there's rec soccer and like my U10 girls. We go up to, we go up to play rec soccer. We just destroy everybody. And the games are really slow And it's it's kind of awful to watch and like the girls can't can't like lift themselves above their competition and just so it's just really it's like it's it's bad for them to play in these rec games And I have like you know we got like 10 or 12 U10 girls who are pretty good Yeah And then what so what do you do with those girls?

Well the next step up is pay $3,000 and go play for the Chattanooga Red Wolves Academy and there's got to be something in the middle, you know? There's got to be something else, maybe $500 a year or something to do like something not quite as not quite the Red Wolves, but definitely better than, but then you run into like, there's no, there's no U12 girls rec soccer league in our community because they're like, so many girls have like aged out. Or like there just isn't enough girls to make enough teams. Anyway, there's a lot to kind of work through on all that

But it just seems like every situation is a little different And there's all these particulars you got to navigate Yeah, there's room. I mean, I've thought about, you know, like you can easily paint that $100 to $75 covers the kids uniforms And 25 is the kid's player card. Like, yeah, we're basically free. You know, I've thought about charging for the uniforms to just,

because we do have kids that come and go. Just to get a little, just get a little bit more buy-in from the parents, basically. Yeah, and it's not like we're still free. It's just you're just paying for that extra stuff that we need it, right? And hopefully you don't just go to a tournament with us and then leave and go to play on another team because they saw your kid, which happened a lot very early on. It sounds like your feelings about that are conflicted because you want them to move on. Yeah. But maybe not in the middle of the season.

Yeah, yeah, got it. We want them to move on, just not. know, we're getting ready for the next tournament. It's like, shit, now our best player. Especially when you only have six on the field, you're missing one or two solid dudes. Like, that's basically a whole new team. You know, it sounds bad to say, but like, you know, that's almost half the team, right? So it hurts me when that happens. But it's also, it's something that we call success. It's just I want to have a little bit more grip on how that kid is going from our program to the other program. So that's why these pathways that I've been working on since the summer is kind of that. way forward, I think, is formalizing it. But yeah, we're totally open, you know, think about it.

Like, you can take those girls to tournaments and the $100 would cover, you know, if you didn't want to still do something like that. And what's nice with what we do because everything is free is now I can easily do partnerships with the schools where, like the partnership I have with one school in the district, they don't charge us for their, I mentioned gym space. I don't know if I remember when I was knocking on the door, begging on the door. Yeah. So we have that gym. That gym normally costs $70 an hour.

We get it for free, right? Like these are things that open up a whole new world for people like you or others that want to do something because now they're like, dude, we're not paying $50 an hour to reserve this field. We now have a partnership with X school or whatever because our programs are free. We fall under this category one designation. And as long as they don't incur a cost. of having that space open, it's free for you.

Because the janitors are there. There's some staff already there anyways. Like, it's free. And that's huge, right? $70 an hour, we're there for almost an hour and a half is kind of the rough. Right, you add that up three times, you know, two, three times a week.

So that's a lot of money, you know? Yeah. And we just use it as another space because there's not a lot of space on the field. We've gotten kind of larger. There's about 60 to 65 kids that come out every day for those three days. a week. So the space has gotten a little bit too small to work with. So having that gym just gives us

another avenue. The kids will take off their cleats. They'll go in there. They'll play. This is another thing is playing kind of barefoot. So it's not only fast to play in the gym, but also your foot is feeling the ball. Right. So it's kind of a nice thing where they take off their cleats. They go inside. They play with their socks, basically. And then they come back out in 15 minutes with their leads back on and they go to the next station. So there's ways forward, and this is the stuff I'm talking with the Dallas guys. It's like, there's a way forward. It's just having some flexibility to figure it out with me on the fly, you know?

Yeah. And I guess that's what's occurring to me is that whoever does this kind of thing in whatever community, they're going to have to figure it out on the fly. It's not going to be, I mean, there could be a template, but there's going to have to be some independent thinking within. the constraints of that template, much like soccer itself. Yeah. Yeah, you have the field lines, right?

But there's so much that happens. Those are the left and right limits, but there's a lot that can happen in between those lines. But yeah, check it out, Adam. That's how we started our pilot team was we're just like, let's just go try this out. I'm just going to take these kids to a tournament. We lost every game, right? But like, again, it's just testing.

And that team ended up, you know, as I mentioned, like all the way up to 21. whatever they were. They won that they won a huge tournament. Like, I mean, these are things that wouldn't have been possible if we just didn't try, you know, just like, let's just try it and have that exit strategy of, and if it doesn't work, there's a reason why we're not doing it. So let's, yeah, that's, we'll close that chapter. Yeah.

All right, Anise, thanks so much for your time. Thanks, everybody for listening. We'll see you.