New Haven Independent

He and a handful of other young soccer players turned out at Edgewood park Tuesday afternoon for one of their four weekly practices. The boys are halfway through an eight-week summer soccer program organized by Virgen del Cisne, the local Ecuadorian community organization. The summer soccer school is open to boys 8 to 12 and is targeted towards members of the city’s Latin American communities. (See previous coverage of Virgen del Cisne’s adult soccer league here.)

The school is designed to do more than just train young soccer players, reported Dixon Jimenez, secretary of Virgen del Cisne. It’s also meant to help integrate local Latin American communities and maintain the Spanish language. Hence, coach Ruben Scholis uses Spanish to coach his bilingual team.

Scholis (at right in picture), a recent Ecuadorian immigrant, was a volunteer soccer coach in his home country. His coaching philosophy incorporates the whole player. “The training will form the person,” he said. Athletics develops a player on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels, he explained, to create “an integral person.”

Scholis said that it is a challenge to teach soccer in the U.S., where there is not a big soccer culture like there is in Ecuador.

“It’s great. I’m loving it,” said ten-year-old Roy Orellana (at right in picture, heading the ball with Christopher Rojas). “We are learning how to use your head, how to curve the ball, how to shoot.”

Scholis led the boys through over an hour of drills, offering individual instruction and encouragement. Practice ended with shots on goal against keeper Jean Carlos Disla (at right in top photo). As the biggest member of the team, Disla is practicing to be goalie.

This is the program’s first year, and the team is starting out small. Officially there are a dozen boys signed up, aged 8 to 12. But practice attendance averages around eight players. On Tuesday afternoon only four boys showed up.

German Hernandez, the program’s coordinator (at left in picture), attributes the low enrollment to the fact that the school got started late in the summer and not many people knew about it. “Next year it will be bigger,” he said. “For now, we are happy.”

“The most important is the first step,” agreed Dixon Jimenez (at right in picture), who sees this year as the beginning of a successful annual program.

Jimenez said that he is working on creating partnerships with New Haven Youth Soccer, and he would like to raise funds to buy more equipment for the team. Jimenez was successful earlier this year in getting the city to donate the Edgewood Park soccer field for the program’s use.

Towards the end of practice, Hernandez received a phone call letting him know that the Virgen del Cisne team will be playing a game on Saturday against Nuevo Mexico, one of several Mexican-American teams that practice along Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.

“I can’t be here on Saturday,” said Disla. “I’m going to Massachusetts.”

Hernandez was unfazed. “We’ll have enough players,” he said.

The game will take place at 10:30 on Saturday morning. The soccer fields at Edgewood Park are located between Edgewood and Chapel Streets, near the pond. The Virgen del Cisne players will be wearing yellow jerseys, blue shorts, and red socks: the colors of the Ecuadorian flag.