Leadville – The players are celebrating.
It’s midafternoon on a recent weekday, and the high school soccer team in this old mining town is pulling away from its opponent, goals piling up like cordwood in late fall.
Three, four, five.
Fifteen-year-old Nubia Galindo, who grew up with soccer as a little girl in Mexico, leads the cheers for her teammates from the bench, stomping her feet, cupping hands at her mouth for maximum volume.
“Esa es tuya, Tito!”
“Pasala! Pasala!”
“Get the ball, Will! Go, go, go!”
That a bilingual high schooler from Mexico is part of this first-year, coed soccer program is hardly noteworthy here. More than half of the Lake County High School Panthers soccer team is from Latin America, making the squad the only predominantly Latino program at a school teeming with immigrants.
But what is remarkable is that this school in the central Rocky Mountains eliminated varsity football this season and tapped into a traditional Latino sport, putting Lake County at the edge of a budding movement to promote high school soccer among communities with growing Latino populations.
In a handful of towns across Colorado, and in other parts of the West and Southwest where Latinos are becoming more ingrained in their communities, the push to build new high school soccer programs is part of a larger effort that educators hope eventually will curb massive Latino dropout rates while encouraging their young minority athletes to become more involved in school.
“If we can keep the kids involved in a sport they love, a sport they’ve known since they were little, then hopefully we can hold them all the way through graduation,” says Allen Coryell, Lake County’s interim principal. “If we’re just offering academics, school isn’t going to have the same draw for them. That’s a reality.”
Lake County’s move to soccer and away from varsity football this year barely raised an eyebrow in Leadville, where high school participation in the sport – especially among Latinos – was lagging.
Instead, in a school where more than half of the approximately 300 students are Latino, the teenagers embraced soccer as an opportunity to mix their culture with their education.
“When you take the field, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, we’re representing our school,’ and that’s a pretty good feeling,” says Roger Espinoza, 15, a sophomore originally from Honduras and one of 25 players on the team, 13 of whom are Latino. “Soccer made me focus on my grades, made me confident. Now, I think I want to go to college.”
Since 2001, at least five Colorado high schools have jump- started boys or girls soccer programs in schools where Latino teens made up a third or more of the student body. The most recent growth has been near agriculture-rich communities to the north and near mountain resorts, according to data from the Colorado High School Activities Association.
It’s far too early to gauge the success that the sport has had in growing Latino classrooms, but Lake County administrators say their school could be an important test case.
While Latino students make up a majority of the school, the students report feelings of racial isolation at times, heightened by the fact that few Latinos played organized sports before soccer’s emergence.
The Leadville school, too, is among the lower-performing ones on state tests and has had problems retaining Latino youngsters.
The school reported a dropout rate of 11.1 percent last year, nearly 8 percentage points higher than in 2000. Administrators say Latino dropout figures are much higher than the school’s overall rate.
Which makes soccer all that more important.
Just two months into the season, Lake County students and coaches say the school’s attitude shift is palpable.
At lunchtime, when the teens generally segregate themselves along racial lines, more white students are seen sitting with their Latino classmates.
The school put an autographed team ball inside a glass case in a well-traveled hallway to show the players their importance in the community.
And there has been a recent surge of interest in classwork.
“One of my friends didn’t even want to come to school before soccer,” says Alfredo “Freddy” Chavarria, a Lake County senior and one of his team’s best players. “I’ve got kids coming up saying, ‘I want to play next year, but I need to get my grades up.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
Sport spreading fast
High school soccer is growing at a white-hot pace throughout Colorado.
In five years, 27 schools have added at least one soccer team, with much of the growth happening in suburban cities around Denver and Colorado Springs where new high schools sprout by the dozen every few years.
But in burgeoning Latino communities statewide, especially in smaller towns outside metropolitan areas, few schools had organized soccer programs until the recent push.
“Because of soccer, we’ve been able to bring our Hispanic students and our white students together in a way we never thought was possible,” says Jeff Verosky, athletic director at Weld Central High School in Keenesburg, which added boys and girls teams four years ago. “When they put on that jersey, they feel like they’re part of this school. They want to be more than just a student.”
At Valley High School in Gilcrest, the Weld County school added soccer this season after a half-dozen Latino students told administrators that they wanted to play a sport.
“Overnight, we saw class attendance jump, academic performance improve, everything,” says Justin McMillan, the school’s athletic director. Of the soccer team’s 29 players, 27 are Latino.
“I’ve never seen a sport have this kind of immediate impact,” he says. “I feel like we’re finally reaching these kids.”
For years, studies have shown that students who participate in after-school activities are more likely to stay in school, register to vote and volunteer in their communities.
In Arizona, where 15 of 30 new soccer programs in the past five years are from largely Latino towns, the teams already are challenging for state titles and have played an important role in reviving community spirit.
Sensing the buildup in migrant-dominated towns such as the ones in Arizona, CHSAA is considering allowing eight- man soccer teams in some regions – in place of 11-man squads – to give small schools another athletic option.
“It’s a beautiful thing”
During a recent Friday game with James Irwin Charter High School of Colorado Springs, about 50 people dot the stands amid rain and bitter wind. Armchair coaches yell encouragement in English and Spanish.
“Pasala, Ruben! Pasala!”
“Pass it, Ruben! Pass it!”
By the early second half, with a charge from its players up front, Lake County’s lead swells to 2-0, then 3-0, then 4-0. James Irwin scores late to make it 4-1.
Jill Dzubay, whose son, David, plays for Lake County, can’t help feeling pride for her boy’s school.
“Everyone on that field is an equal, and it’s a beautiful thing to see those cultures and all those different kids out there,” Dzubay says. “It’s incredible.”
Just then, Ruben Godoy, whose parents recently moved to Leadville from Zacatecas, Mexico, fires a laser past the overwhelmed James Irwin goalkeeper.
The 5-1 score turns to 6-1 within minutes. The team celebrates. The referee’s whistle blows.
The players slap hands with their opponents, wave to their fans and huddle near their bench.
They smile and hug and cheer and bounce in a circle.
“That out there,” Dzubay says, pointing to the players, “warms my heart.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-954-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
