Inaugural NLC/NIC Soccer Festival puts food in pantries
Jul. 17—ELKHART — Six boys soccer programs from the area gathered Saturday to compete in the inaugural NLC/NIC Soccer Festival event at Concord High School.
Concord and Northridge from the Northern Lakes Conference were joined by Penn, South Bend St. Joseph, Elkhart and Mishawaka Marian from the Northern Indiana Conference to play in a charitable, friendly event.
Players from all six programs were combined and then split up into random teams, allowing for players to not play with their high school teammates. The teams consisted of 3-5 players each and were played on smaller, makeshift soccer fields. Teams would rotate across the numerous fields, creating new matchups every 20-30 minutes. No score was kept in the games.
In order to enter the event, a player must have donated five canned food items. A total of 86 players competed, meaning at least 430 cans of food were collected. The food will be donated evenly between the Elkhart County and Saint Joseph County food pantries.
"We got together and we talked about what we could do to promote high school athletics and make it a thing about giving back to the community; just coming together to play the game we love," Concord coach Shawn McCuen said. "Many of these kids play club soccer together and other things. When we play against one another in the fall, we're going to compete. But when the game's over, we're all friends. There's things bigger in life than the game."
Being able to have a charitable element by donating canned food items was a big factor in organizing the event for all the coaches involved.
"Now we have families that are helped out in our communities," Penn coach Kyle Zaber said. "... Moving into the next phase of COVID, there's still families suffering, and all these boys are able to contribute to helping their community be a little bit better."
Elkhart coach Todd Sheely echoed many of Zaber's sentiments.
"That's a unique thing about education-based sports: they're based in a community," Sheely said. "They're not 30 minutes away or two hours away perhaps like their club environment. As we know, the pandemic took a toll on people in a lot of different ways, and so it was a way that we could give back to Elkhart and Saint Joe counties.
"It was just stressing to these kids that it is a game, but it's also above the game, the idea of servant leadership."
Making sure the teams were a mix of players from the schools involved was also a key element to the event for the coaches.
"I love it because, in speaking with all of our coaches in our small group, it's amazing how much we all have a shared vision that we didn't quite share with each other until this year," Zaber said. "I can tell how much of these coaches care about my kids, which is fantastic, and I love they got to hear about how much I care about theirs."
All the coaches hope to make the event an annual tradition and add more teams each year.
"For the first year, I was very pleased and very impressed with the turnout," McCuen said. "This is our first year: it's a learning curve, and we can grow it into bigger things."
Sheely also made sure to note the quality of play on the field Saturday, despite no score being tallied.
"There's a lot of really good players in Michiana," Sheely said.
Austin Hough can be reached at austin.hough@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2360. Follow him on Twitter at @AustinHoughTGN.
