Sporting Brookside operates a huge youth soccer program here in Kansas City, involving more than 6,000 kids a year. It all started nearly 50 years ago in the shadow of an American soccer culture that was very different from what it is today.
There was a time when the Brookside Soccer Club — as it was known at its inception in 1977 — was the brainchild of three dads who wanted something for their kids to do.
Bill Finn, who now lives in El Paso, Texas, started the organization with his friends Frank Rieger and John Kickbush.
“We knew nothing about soccer,” Finn said of the time when the program was founded. “That summer, there was an ad in The Kansas City Star saying I could go to a class and become a soccer referee. We needed somebody who knew the rules, so I went and refereed in the fall.”
Then, the Brookside Soccer Club began fielding its own teams.
“In that spring we had two teams: Frank Rieger coached the kindergarten, first and second grade, and I coached the third and fourth grade,” he said. “It was just like maybe five or 10 families.”
After that, many local parents expressed interest in their kids joining the league, so Finn, Rieger and Kickbush decided to open it to more families.
“We went from two teams to eight teams to 28 teams to 50 teams in two years. It was a total explosion,” Finn said. “These people were head coaches who had never been on a soccer field. I mean, it was crazy. But, it wasn’t that we marketed, it was just a need that existed in the neighborhood, and we just filled the void and it exploded.”
Now, all of these years later, Sporting Brookside says half a million kids have played soccer through the organization.
Finn is back in Kansas City this week because he has tickets to see Argentina play Algeria in the World Cup. It's a fitting full-circle moment that demonstrates Kansas City’s rise as a true soccer town.
- Bill Finn, co-founder of Brookside Soccer Club
