San Diego’s first Street Soccer USA park is set to open in City Heights

The field at Horace Mann Middle School in City Heights wasn’t exactly what everyone would call “perfect.” To Reed Fox of nonprofit Street Soccer USA, however, it was precisely that. Fox, the organization’s San Diego Director, was exploring potential sites for a future street soccer park to provide a dedicated home for Street Soccer USA programming in the county. “They have a large campus where in a corner of it were these old, unused tennis courts with cracks in the asphalt, weeds growing everywhere. And it was just a perfect spot,” he remembers of first visiting the school. Through partnership and collaboration with San Diego Unified School District, and with the support of partners that include the Alex Morgan Foundation and the Adam R. Scripps Foundation, the city’s first Street Soccer USA park is slated to make its grand debut at a ribbon-cutting event February 17.

Officially the Adam R. Scripps Street Soccer Park, it will include two lit, walled, turf street soccer fields that are roughly the size of a basketball court each, as well as a converted shipping container to serve as the park’s “learning center” — essentially a clubhouse — where off-the-field activities including homework help, mentorship, film review, and more can take place. There’s also an extra turf warm-up area as well as two basketball courts and a tennis court Fox says will eventually be converted to a “soccer tennis” court.

Street Soccer USA’s mission to make soccer available to everyone is already in practice throughout San Diego. “We’re in the prison once a month at Richard J. Donovan [Correctional Facility]. We’re running a free program for military members and veterans, the first of its kind in San Diego, twice a week on base at Miramar. We’re in a homeless shelter in El Cajon once a week. So, there’s a bunch of things happening. And while the park will be a large focus of ours, we’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing as well,” says Fox. 

Accessibility is another essential pillar. “[The park] is not just for people who can afford to play. Everything we do there is going to be free, and it’s going to be for all ages and skill levels,” says Fox, who adds that community partnerships will enable other groups to access and use the park, too. “It won’t just be only Street Soccer programming here. We have multiple partners already in the area who are scheduled to use it that work with refugee groups, military groups, LGBT groups. What I’ve told all of our partners is [that] I want them to think of it as being as much their park as it is our park. I want everybody in the community to think of it like it’s their own.” Of course, being on a school campus means that access to the park will be restricted for student use only during school hours; after-hours community access is offered separately to ensure standard school campus security.

Fox hopes that the park’s debut will elicit more support, volunteers, and sponsorships so that he can continue to grow what he is able to offer and even potentially open a second park. “What we prioritize is creating deep relationships in the communities we work with, not just setting something up and leaving and never seeing the kids and people there again. Maybe I would love to have two, three, or four of these in San Diego, but I don’t want to have 100 of these in San Diego, because that’s not really what we’re about,” he says. “We want [the parks] to just be really fun places where kids and community members can show up and there will always be somebody there to support them and play with them and be a mentor. That’s the idea behind the whole thing.” streetsoccerusa.org