I had the amazing fortune to serve as a missionary in South Africa for two years, in which I was deeply embedded in soccer culture. I played in nice stadiums, long grass fields, bumpy dirt lots, and township streets. The passion and love of the game have forever changed who I am. I now play as often as I can with a small group weekly.
That's me in red in the center of the photo in a township in Durban, South Africa. When I got home in 2010 I got right back to work and enrolled at LCAD again after attending there for my freshman year. Almost every project for the rest of my time there was themed on Africa in one way or another. Weather is was a restaurant, helpful language cards, t-shirts, or my final design project, a non-profit soccer social network.
The social network project was called Move4 (I have the move4.org domain but the website recently went down, so it's under construction.) and focused on connecting small teams from around the world. Very similar to a pen pal and looking to raise money and funds to support each team in a Patreon style. At first my donation direction was clothing, shoes, etc. as a way of giving back. With some research and chats with experienced organizers I learned that it had some major downfalls. Economically it was a terrible way to support a community. In the case of sending clothing or shoes, this prevents a merchant or business locally of providing those services. The goal is to work with local businesses to supply the teams with the resources that they need, thus supporting more than just the team.
I built a website with Drupal and themed it to allow people to create their teams and formations. This allowed for teams across the world to come together with a common language or soccer and connect. I wish I could have done more but with a family and career kicking off my priorities and focus were elsewhere.
Next a buddy of mine created USA Hooligan since we were hooked on playing fantasy soccer on the Yahoo! Premiere League Fantasy app. Sadly they discontinued support of it, it was one of the best user experiences. We wanted to emulate what the team at Razzball was doing with line up commentary. So we created the USA Hooligans brand and website where we would upload and share our weekly line up predictions. Lasted for about 2 seasons and then it was more than we asked for to manage again with growing families.
Lastly, and most recently, I’ve been working with my friend Katenda on a soccer academy in Uganda call Kiota Sports Academy. He’s an ex-soccer pro there and working on creating a sports academy to support and unite the underrepresented community. So we’ve slowly been creating a logo and website to showcase the work he’s been doing in his community.
