Sara Kugler and Amanda Dey couldn’t stop worrying about some of their students, a crop of children who had recently arrived in America and were still adjusting to their new life in Fairfax County, Virginia.
In 2022 – a school year millions of kids across the country were still returning to the classroom after remote learning – the women were searching for ways to help encourage their students to come to class.
Kugler recalls approaching one student to ask what afterschool activities he might find interesting. Something, she says, to get him to school and keep him there.
Art? No. Guitar? Not for him. The boy had a different idea.
“He said soccer,” Kugler recalled.
By the time she and Dey returned to school the next morning, they learned he wasn’t the only one who wanted to play.
“These boys start coming to my classroom, and they’re like: ‘I want to join the soccer team,’” Dey said.
That first year, Kugler and Dey say they helped six boys join a community team but quickly realized they needed more than transportation.
“None of them had cleats; none of them had uniforms,” Kugler said.
She and a few other teachers took to Instagram to ask their friends if they would sponsor a kid to play soccer. Within a week, the teachers raised more than $4,000 – money they’d use to fund what happened next.
By their second year, so many kids wanted to play that they formed their own team. By year three, they had two teams. They turned to family, including Kugler’s husband, to help coach, and friends, family and local organizations to help get the kids supplies and to practice.
“The community really came together, and so many different channels came into play that made it possible,” Dey said.
And all the while, they say they saw changes at school, too.
“Their attendance turned around,” Dey said. “They started attending school every day.”
“Soccer gave me motivation to come to school. Like, I used to skip a little bit of days,” 12-year-old student Julio told News4.
Asked why he would sometimes skip class, he said: “Because, like, I used to, like, be nervous to go to school.”
But being part of a soccer team, changed his way of thinking, Julio said.
“My family always believed in me, and then also did my coaches, so that gave me more confidence,” he said.
Alex, 13, said his teachers helped him become more disciplined on and off the field.
“I feel like I’ve became a better person because of them, not just in the soccer world, but also because of the lessons they gave me at school,” Alex said.
Both boys’ mothers said they’ve watched their sons grow throughout the experience, with Julio’s mother, Sulma, sharing dreams of her son one day playing professional soccer. She said the community teams Kugler and Dey began provided critical resources for families that may not otherwise have had access.
After running the community teams for four years, Kugler and Dey left the elementary school for new jobs, making sure the players who wanted to continue with the sport landed on new teams, including travel leagues.
Kugler said the experience gave her a more intimate look and appreciation for what many of her students’ families were going through, calling their parents’ dedication “inspiring” – especially in recent years as immigration enforcement has challenged those communities.
“These parents were working six-days-a-week, 14-hours-a-day,” Kugler said. “That’s not an exaggeration. That’s literally what was happening. And these parents were fighting tooth and nail for their kids, and when they had free time, they would all come to the soccer game.”
Dey said that, through the hours spent in the classroom and on the field, she grew to understand her students more fully.
“There’s so much more to a kid than just what presents themselves in the classroom,” she said. “My heart has grown a million times, because I’ve seen them in so many different ways beyond what you would just see them sitting at a desk.”
They say they carry lessons from their league with them, lessons embodied by the motto their teams chant at every game: “Todos los días.” Every day.
“’Todos los días’ became, like, this is how we live,” Kugler said. “Every day, you show up for your team, you show up at school.”
Dey said the words captured the spirit of what the students, their families, teachers and the community built together.
“We show up every day and we show up together, because that’s who we are,” she said. “We are this community and we are here to be together.”
Reported by Moises Linares, produced by Katie Leslie, and shot and edited by Jeff Piper.
