By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
Four months after Sitka Youth Soccer joined forces with the Alaska Rush Soccer Club, a statewide umbrella group, local soccer enthusiasts have a chance to compete in a fall time league as the group seeks to expand local interest in the sport.
While the popularity of soccer in Sitka has waxed and waned over the years – there is no longer a high school team in town – Sitka Rush Soccer director Brock Vowell said prospects for the October to November fall season look solid.
“The season is going to be about seven weeks, and as of right now we have 75 kiddos registered, and we always get a pretty decent push at the end,” Vowell said Thursday. “We have a really large young group of kids that are wanting to play soccer.”
Young soccer players celebrate during practice with the Sitka Rush Soccer Club during a four-day soccer camp, July 30 in Sitka. The club’s seven-week fall season begins October 9. (Photo provided by Sitka Rush Soccer)
A strong base of younger players is going to be important “to see this club get bigger,” he said.
The club is open to young people from pre-kindergarten through high school age.
In May, Sitka joined Palmer, Juneau and Homer under the Alaska Rush Soccer banner. Rush is a national organization of soccer clubs.
Vowell said prospects are good for soccer to expand as a regular sport in Sitka.
“The next step for the club is to become more of what it looks like in… a big city. You know, having a set team. And what we’re kind of working towards, the next step in the fall season is, we were able to get some brand new Sitka Rush Soccer Club kits, like some jerseys and shorts and socks,” Vowell said. “And they mimic what you would see in really nice looking jerseys on big teams, and so it’s kind of cool seeing a smaller community getting the resources of having these really nice jerseys. I think that kind of just helps with the legitimacy of playing soccer in Sitka, and also kind of just makes them look sharp.”
Vowell hopes to attract enough coaches to keep up with an increasing number of kids who want to play soccer. So far, the club has 18 coaches for the fall season.
“We’re always trying to get some new faces and trying to reach out to people and we’re really trying to get some new coaches or people interested in coaching. In this season, we’ve had a couple of new coaches, which is really awesome. But there’s some anxiety around making sure that we do have enough coaches to support our growth as well,” the director said.
Sitka Rush Soccer had a youth soccer camp in July, attracting about 40 players who practiced under the instruction of Steve Rubinstein, coach of the Palmer Rush club Polar Vortex.
“It was really fun, we had a good time,” Vowell said. “And Steve said that it was something that he’d want to come back and do again and there’s even interest now in opening up a Sitka summer camp for the entire state of Alaska.”
A handful of high schoolers in the club have also been picked to form a futsal team that will travel north to compete this winter. Futsal is similar to soccer but is played on a smaller, hard-surface court. Sitka’s futsal squad was assembled by Randy Hitchcock and Olivier Pheulpin, Vowell said.
“They put together a group of high schoolers who are actually going to be going to… Anchorage to play at a futsal tournament this December, which is really awesome,” Vowell said.
Sitka Rush Soccer’s fall season begins October 9, and there’s still time to register. Information is posted at https://www.sitkayouthsoccer.com/.
