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Durango has terrific - and low-priced - soccer culture
If you compare what we pay here in Durango to any metropolitan area, you'll find that folks in Durango pay a fraction of what those in other cities pay for their kids to participate in soccer. Yet, the quality of the programs in Durango is first rate.
We met to discuss improvements to the local youth soccer program. I happened to bring along the op-ed piece by local soccer parent and ski coach Jack Turner ("Pay to Play: What price success?," Herald, March 22) and we all got a laugh out of the picture of a soccer ball with $100 bills around it.
Someone joked that pennies would have been more accurate. One of the coaches, who hails from Ireland, commented that he wasn't sure if he had ever seen a $100 bill.
What isn't so humorous, however, is the article that accompanied the picture. Turner claims that our local high school soccer camps are expensive and overpriced.
The reality, however, is that there is little money in soccer in Durango. By the time you factor in all the hours they dedicate to the sport, the people who do make a few dollars coaching soccer here are lucky to get minimum wage. They are involved with soccer because they are passionate about teaching the sport they love - not to make a quick buck, or big bucks. Indeed, from parks and rec soccer to local club soccer to the high school programs, soccer is a bargain in Durango. (In addition, soccer at all levels in Durango offers financial assistance to those where even a bargain is too much.)If you compare what we pay here in Durango to any metropolitan area, you'll find that folks in Durango pay a fraction of what those in other cities pay for their kids to participate in soccer. Yet, the quality of the programs in Durango is first rate. Probably the best reflection of that is at the high school level, where our boys varsity team regularly competes in the state playoffs - and has even begun to challenge at the highest level, reaching the state semi-finals two years ago. The girls varsity team has not lost a Southwestern League game in more than two years.
So why does a small town in the middle of nowhere have such an exceptional soccer program?
With individual sports, where a unique athlete can literally come from anywhere, we occasionally see an exceptional mountain biker, Nordic skier or kayaker come out of our neck of the woods to compete at state and national levels.
Team sports, however, are a different story. A team of 11 Durangoans playing against a team of 11 from the Front Range is like David versus Goliath - or more accurately, a team of Davids versus a team of Goliaths. And yet, this is exactly what is happening with Durango soccer - the Davids of Durango are competing at the same level as the Goliaths on the Front Range.
We can attribute this success not to a win-at-all-cost mentality, but to a vision that former Fort Lewis College Mens Soccer Coach Jeremy Gunn brought to town back in 1999. The soccer community here is unique in that Jeremy brought all of the programs together.
From the program at Fort Lewis College to the high school to the Durango Youth Soccer Association and all the way down to the kindergartners in the parks and rec soccer program, Jeremy sought to bind the programs together so all benefited from each other. In order to truly have a great soccer program in Durango, Jeremy saw that it was imperative to share the soccer expertise at the college with all of the youth soccer players in town.
Jeremy worked to improve his own coaching knowledge by engaging soccer experts such as Andy McDermid and Jason Bestwick from England, as well as the renowned sport psychologist Dan Freigang. In turn, he gave all of Durango's soccer coaches access to these experts. That's how we in out-of-the-way Durango have ended up with an absolute soccer genius, Andy McDermid, and his protégé, Jason Bestwick, spending two weeks each summer providing a terrific soccer camp for our high school soccer players.
The reality is that McDermid and Beswick have been working with our youth on our high school and club teams for years. And the reason we can get quality soccer educators like the two of them to come to Durango is simply because they love Durango. They are not here to take our money. They have plenty of offers from Division I and Division II college soccer programs.
Rather, they come here each summer because they like the town and the people here. And most of all, they really love that this little town in the middle of nowhere has developed an incredibly cool soccer culture.
We in the soccer community are indebted to Jeremy Gunn for instilling the integrated, mutually supportive soccer culture we enjoy in Durango. And today we have some really great people carrying on Gunn's tradition. One of those is Durango High School Boys Soccer Coach Scott Emrich, voted Colorado high school soccer coach of the year by his peers two years ago.
By bringing back to Durango the two soccer experts Gunn first brought to town several years ago, Emrich affords our high school soccer players a unique opportunity through the two-week camp he organizes. And like the rest of the soccer programs in Durango, that opportunity is absolutely first rate - at a rock-bottom price.
David Williams is a volunteer youth soccer coach in Durango and author of Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer: A Baffled Parent's Guide published by McGraw-Hill, Inc.
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