How one nonprofit is helping young soccer players change their lives

LOS ANGELES — Adversity was on the schedule every week for the South Los Angeles Legends, a soccer team of 11- and 12-year-old girls, many of whom were growing up in underserved communities.

“We were trying to navigate a pay-to-play system that had basically outpriced our community,” said LaShon Wooldridge, the team manager and single mother of its goalkeeper.

That was not the only thing that made the Legends, well, legendary. In what is largely a white suburban sport, especially at the youth level, the Legends’ roster was made up entirely of Black youths from South L.A., girls who had to fight for access and equality before they got close to a playing field.

Yet they didn’t lose a game, going unbeaten in 96 matches en route to an AYSO national championship.

That was five years ago and those pint-sized trailblazers have become high school seniors. For most of them the skills, self-assurance and success they developed in that magical summer on the field have followed them into the classroom, where they have continued to excel and defy expectations.

“It definitely gave me confidence,” said Ameerah Kolleff, 17, an honor student who also plays soccer at the academically challenging Girls Academic Leadership Academy, the only public all-girls STEM school in California. “It showed me that if we fight hard enough, we can get what we want.”

Soccer is also opening doors and opportunities for Sidney Wooldridge, Kolleff’s 17-year-old club teammate at SoCal United who is also an honor student at GALA, where she has won two L.A. City championships.

“I think it started my journey and gave me the idea that I want to continue in soccer in college,” she said. “Having that support system around me, the same people who were there in 2019, having the same people now gave me the reassurance that I can do it.”

To take that success to the next level, both girls have expanded their support systems to include ACCESS U, a nonprofit foundation that provides students from underserviced communities who stand out in soccer and academics with the resources and guidance they need to negotiate the college recruitment process. The foundation was established in 2016 by Joaquin Escoto, now executive vice president of MLS expansion club San Diego FC, and Brad Rothenberg, son of Alan Rothenberg, a former U.S. Soccer president and the man behind the 1994 World Cup, the only one held in the U.S.

The program is not designed to turn young players into pros. Rothenberg said few of the kids currently in the program have the skill or desire to make a living playing soccer. But many, such as Kolleff and Wooldridge, are good enough to get a college scholarship and that alone can be life-changing.

“I’m perfectly happy to help them get to college. So I really think of it as an education program that filters through socio-economic challenges and finds kids,” he said. “By just helping them connect the dots to college coaches and scholarships … these kids are going to elite schools that they didn’t know was in their grasp.”

And they’ll graduate from those schools with little to no debt.

Before launching ACCESS U, Rothenberg was co-founder of Alianza de Futbol, a nationwide program focused on creating soccer opportunities for Hispanic youth, who often found their entry into the game blocked by the same pay-for-play system that frustrated the South Los Angeles Legends.

“Passionately devoted to equity in soccer,” reads the bio on Rothenberg’s LinkedIn page.

ACCESS U provides its student-athletes with as many as 80 hours of one-on-one tutoring, a 10-week test-prep course and college counseling services for free. Some players are also sent to so-called “ID camps,” which can be a crucial part of the recruiting process because they offer a competitive environment for players to experience what college is like while also giving them entry to coaches and schools.

To be admitted to ACCESS U, players must have at least a 3.2 grade-point average and be good enough to compete at the college level, but not necessarily beyond that.

Rothenberg tells the story of Noel Ortega to illustrate the influence his program can have. An excellent student and the City Section player of the year at Birmingham High, Ortega was headed to Cal State Northridge before ACCESS U intervened and helped get him a scholarship to Cornell. He started 11 games in three seasons, scoring just once, but he won an academic All-Ivy League award before graduating into a job as an analyst with Goldman Sachs.

“We have two kids at Harvard, one on his way to Penn,” Rothenberg said. “For these kids that does matter. It’s a resume-maker for them.”

There are a record 66 soccer players — 62 of them girls — currently in the program, said Rothenberg, who would like to see that number grow to four times that many by 2026. To do that, he says the $500,000 budget he had this year will have to triple.

“I went to an Ivy League school,” said Rothenberg, who graduated from Brown “and a lot of my friends have done very well for themselves. They know I’m coming after them. They’re hiding but I’m coming to get them.”

Kolleff hopes her resume eventually includes a degree from Howard University, a historically Black college that recently replaced Stanford as her top choice.

“I wanted to be on a team that looked like me,” she said.

Wooldridge’s mother said her daughter is considering Chicago University, Greenville University and Texas Southern, among other schools.

“I’m a student before I’m an athlete. So in order to succeed on the field I now have to succeed in school as well,” said Sidney Wooldridge, whose club soccer obligations not only include excellent grades but community service hours as well.

“They set the bar high for the younger of girls generation following them,” LaShon Wooldridge said.

ACCESS U graduates will have little influence on the world of elite soccer that Rothenberg’s father has long moved in. Yet it can make a life-changing impact on the families of people such as Ortega, Kolleff and Wooldridge. And the value of that hasn’t escaped the elder Rothenberg, who has the most successful World Cup in history on his resume.

But his son, he said, might be doing more important work.

“He’s provided smart, talented kids the opportunity to receive a college education without debt,” he said. “I’ve always felt organized soccer has left so many behind because of economics, the pay-to-play system. ACCESS U is filling that gap.

“Needless to say, as Brad’s father I have immense pride in what he’s dedicated his life to.”