Do you believe in miracles?

"I don't want a Dream team, I want a team of Dreamers"
--Herb Brooks

In the 1950's something special happened in St. Paul. Pond hockey generated out of the east St. Paul area created a generation of kids who played for the fun of it. Outdoors, unstructured, self directed. They called themselves the "Grand Army of Phalen Creek," and they changed the world.

It started out just having fun. At nights, on weekends, with friends they just played because it was fun. Then they got good. Johnson High School, where many of them attended started to win and dominate the Minnesota High School championships in the fifties and sixties. A number of them were members of the 1960 Gold medal winning Olympic Hockey team. Also from that group but cut from that team was Herb Brooks who coached in 1980 and helped famously bring home the Gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980.

So how does simple free play hockey, without coaching and matching uniforms and high level tournaments, and travel and fruit snacks bring about the century's greatest sporting achievement?

I believe it's that magic moment. Circumstances come together, something clicks, the kid is inspired by sport (in our case soccer) and then he finds a place and friends through which to express it. With his friends the young player competes, wins, loses, finds success, fails, learns, and masters. This journey of success, failure and mastery is the love of the game made real. It is the true journey. The heart of sport. When kids play for the love of it, be it pick up basketball, hockey, they are hard to beat.

We all know that pick up is the greatest environment. So what are we doing to revive it? It is my belief that the lost language of simple pick up soccer can be regenerated by providing environments that are welcoming and safe, and through this we can create communities of players of all ages can transform the kids,the game and the world. This is our goal at JOTP.


What do we need?

1. Location, Location, Location. In Rio it's the Flamenco Park Courts, In Sao Paulo it's the neighborhood futsal court. There has to be a meeting place where the following objectives can consistently be found.

2. Fun. If it's not fun kids won't put in the time. Proper field size, balls, surface, all key. Fun is the intersection of ability and challenge. Games need to be competitive yet welcoming. This is not easy and takes the passing down of leadership skills. The older, better kids go over the ground rules to the new kids, bring them in, but then hold them to a standard. For instance, in lot’s of other countries the new kid starts in goal, there they see the game and learn. If they hang, they eventually get a chance to move out on the field bringing their burgeoning social and soccer skills with them, making way for the next youngster to step in.

3. Safe. Parents need to know that their kids are safe. The game is safe and the game is safe inside you. You can try things, experiment. Answer problems in new ways. My definition of soccer genius is the moment a new and better way is found. A better way to score, to pass, simpler movements, elegant solutions. Without experimentation this is not possible.

4. Diversity. A diverse group of Players, Coaches and Parents who are true believers in the possibilities of themselves and each other. It is true friendship. Perhaps we will never be closer to anyone, any teammate as we were in those early days of pick up, street, pond or sandlot. Surely that magic moment of discovery does not happen in the world cup final, it happens with your best fiend at the park. Perhaps the rest of our efforts, our search for competitions, accomplishments are merely an attempt to recapture that joy. Johann Cruyff was asked, when he was coach at Barcelona, why does he still sometimes scrimmage along with his players? “Because, there may be a play, something happens, where just for a second you’re a kid again.”

5. Dreamers. Roger Lemerre, coach of the European Champs, France in 2000 famously replied when asked what the role of the coach was? "To Dream." Dreams of kids imagining a move, a championship goal. The playground grand antics that grow over time into possibilities. Of course this takes time care and all the intricate ingredients of those perfect times and places that produce the best of us.

Something happened right in St. Paul. The environment was just so. The location provided the place. The place called for a game. The game demanded rules and social order set down by the older leaders who passed those skills on to the next generation. Each generation learned. perfected and improved on the skills and then passed those down. And they all dreamed.

I believe that this came together on those rinks in east St. Paul and those kids changed the world. What’s to say we can’t make we can make it happen here, just this time in soccer.

Count me in as one of those dreamers.


TK