Liberal, Kan. – The instructions from Lori Navarro could come from any coach, on any soccer field in the country.
“Keep your head down,” Navarro tells her team. “Don’t get under the ball. And Sammy, shoot like you mean it.”
But when the Liberal High School Redskins take the field for the last workout before their season opener, the soundscape shifts abruptly on this small patch of southwest Kansas – mirroring the changes that waves of Latin American immigrants have wrought in the area.
Shouts of “Go, go, go!” blend with “Aqui, aqui!” – Spanish for “Here, here!”
Players and coaches switch back and forth between the two languages, sometimes in the same sentence.
That English is spoken at all is one of the few indications that the practice isn’t taking place in Mexico City or San Salvador.
Whether native-born or immigrant, everyone on Liberal’s roster – players, coaches, even trainers and managers – is Hispanic.
“This isn’t suburban soccer,” Navarro says with a laugh. “It’s a different culture.”
It’s certainly different from the stereotype of the sport in the United States: affluent, elitist, the province of soccer moms in sport utility vehicles.
Here, the only blond heads on the field are dye jobs, and the smell from the nearby National Beef Packing plant wafts over when the wind comes out of the east.
Recent estimates by the Census Bureau show that Seward County, where Liberal is located, is close to being the first Kansas county with a Hispanic majority, at 49 percent of its 23,237 residents.
Garden City and Dodge City, which also have high school soccer teams, also have significant – and growing – Hispanic populations.
Football is still king here, where thousands attend games on fall Friday nights and Liberal High’s trophy cases bulge with gridiron-won hardware dating back seven decades or more.
Still, high school futbol is giving more kids a chance to connect with their schools and their communities.
“We are keeping more kids in school because of soccer,” said Jim Little, Liberal’s principal. “And not only are they in school, but their grades are improving, because they have to meet academic standards.”
That’s a powerful incentive, said school secretary Ruth Yeverino, who has two sons on Dodge City’s team.
“I talked to all my kids’ teachers,” Yeverino said while watching the Red Demons beat Hays 3-1 in their season opener.
“I told them, ‘My kids are in soccer, and I want you to call me if their grades slip.”‘
Navarro, who teaches English as a second language at Liberal High School, could easily conduct all of her practices in Spanish – but has made a conscious choice not to.
“This is like another classroom for me,” she said. “I want to make sure the players understand and learn English, and this is another way to do that.”
Not that Navarro has any objection to her students switching linguistic gears on the field.
“It definitely helps when we’re playing teams from the other parts of the state – where they don’t speak much Spanish,” she said with a smile.
Along with better results in the classroom, Little said, players reap benefits in the hallways as well – especially after Liberal reached the Class 5A state semifinals the last two years.
“People support winners, and they’re being recognized more by the student body,” he said, “and what student doesn’t want to be recognized by other students?”
With the successes, though, come plenty of challenges.
Fan support, while growing, still lags behind other sports.
“We get some people coming out to our games,” said Liberal sophomore D.J. Zuniga, a flashy central midfielder. “But we could use more people coming out.”
Forward Sammy Duque, a freshman who was born in Mexico, agreed.
“This is still a town for football and basketball,” Duque said.
Navarro wonders if race might still be a factor in lack of support. But the more likely culprit, she said, is the way matches are scheduled.
“We play a lot of games at 4 o’clock on a Thursday,” she said. “A lot of people can’t get off work then, especially for road games.”
Other issues are more closely tied to language and culture.
Navarro has had players miss practice to translate for their parents at the doctor’s office. On the eve of the regular season, well after the start of fall classes, she was still working to get her star forward – a recent immigrant from Honduras – a job at a grocery store, so he wouldn’t have to work the overnight shift at National Beef.
“He goes to school, he comes to practice, he goes to work, he goes back to school,” she said. “There’s no time for him to sleep.”
And she has lobbied – not always successfully – for players to take the college scholarship offers that come their way.
“It’s not an easy program to coach,” she said. “The list goes on and on, of things we deal with other than soccer.”
Take scholarship offers, for example. Most non-Hispanic students would.
And with Dodge City Community College, Garden City Community College (which just added the sport this year) and Barton County Community College in Great Bend all fielding teams as a way to increase Hispanic enrollment, the opportunities are there.
But Hispanic families generally are more close-knit, Navarro said, and not always keen on having a child leave town for any reason whatsoever- even a college education.
“It’s the culture,” she said. “You stay close to home, you get a job, and you help out the family.”
But as high school players enjoy success outside the area – both with their school and summer teams – they become more amenable to leaving.
Yeverino’s sons both want to play professional soccer someday, and several of Liberal’s players have also set their sights beyond the local club league when they graduate.
“I want to play wherever I can,” junior forward/midfielder Alex Garcia said. “To move to the big city and play – that would be awesome.”
