An interaction more than two decades ago between a soccer ref and soccer enthusiast Franklin Herrera was the catalyst for a friendship between Franklin and fellow soccer enthusiast Noe Garcia that resulted in Redwood City kids having the opportunity to play competitive club soccer even if their parents couldn’t afford the hefty fees.
That interaction took place at Redwood City’s Red Morton Park during a soccer game between Franklin and Noe’s 8-year-old sons’ recreational soccer teams. (Franklin and Noe were each coaching their son’s team.) Noe’s son committed a foul and the ref scolded him sternly. Franklin intervened, telling the ref that, while the foul needed to be addressed, he could have made his point without being quite so harsh.
Noe was astounded by what he’d heard. “Frank’s team was losing. But I could see then that Frank wasn’t about winning. For him, it was about the kids, the community, the team, everything except him.”
At the time, Noe had been thinking about starting a more competitive team for his son, and Franklin, who clearly knew something about coaching kids’ soccer, seemed like an ideal partner. Noe floated the idea by Franklin, Franklin accepted his offer, and the pair, working under the auspices of Redwood City’s Juventus Sport Club, launched one of Redwood City’s first youth club soccer teams. What Noe didn’t know at that time was that Franklin’s gentle giant demeanor and contagious conviviality made him an ace recruiter who thought nothing of approaching kids he didn’t know and suggesting that they try playing soccer.
“He sees a kid on a bike or a kid hanging around the park and he’ll say, ‘Hey, come play soccer’,” says Anna Laura Carlos, a Redwood City mom who has five kids who played soccer under Franklin’s watch.
national trend.) So Franklin and Noe decided to start their own youth club soccer program and to do it their way.
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JASA’s youth program didn’t advertise or have a flashy Web site or a five-year plan. Instead, it relied on what Franklin refers to as “organic growth” that started with the team, not the club.
JASA coaches were compensated but minimally. Because most jobs were done by parents, clubs’ fees–$300 to $500 per child per season–were less than halfwhat club teams charged with far bigger staffs. (Franklin and Noe didn’t take a salary.) If a family couldn’t afford the fees, they chatted privately with Franklin–the designated parent liaison–to figure out how the family could pay less and volunteer more. If that wasn’t an option, Franklin looked for a community sponsor–a family or business willing to help out.
As Anna sees it, “Money is not the important thing for Franklin. It’s about building a community.”
video Franklin’s wife Kristy and his son Alexander made about Franklin’s recovery, was that Franklin needed to give himself the same kind of encouragement he gave his players: “You’ve got to fight as hard as you can.”
What Franklin didn’t know at the time was how much Noe was wrestling with his own issues: his business was in decline, he was losing his house, and he was going through a divorce. “I got strength from Franklin,” Noe says. “My personal problems were zero compared to what my friend was going through. Franklin was ready to give up, throw in the towel. It gave me strength to be the strong person in front of him, even though, inside, I could hardly function.”
It was an arduous and heroic battle, but four months after being admitted to Saint Francis, Franklin temporarily left his walker at the door and exited from the hospital on his own two feet.
The winds of change
A year after he was released from the hospital, Franklin returned to his job as a paraprofessional for kids with special needs at Redwood City’s Kennedy Middle School. Several years later, when he approached Noe about starting a club team for Noe’s daughter, lingering symptoms of Franklin’s illness, including reduced strength in his hips and shoulders and poor balance, made him unable to return to coaching.
Instead, Franklin spent at least four hours a day, six days a week walking the fields at Red Morton Park where JASA’s teams practiced. He’d chat with players. (Noe contends that Franklin knew the names of each of the 600 kids on JASA’s roster; Franklin denies this.) He resolved issues that arose between kids and coaches, coaches and parents, even parents and kids. (Anna, the mom mentioned earlier, says that Franklin has been like a second father to her kids.) And he informally assumed multiple positions–director of coaching, director of the girls’ program, director of the boys’ program, field coordinator, equipment manager, custodian–that other club teams typically hire people to do.
Franklin’s daughter Cassie, Franklin, Franklin’s wife Kristy, and Franklin’s son Alexander. Cassie is a student at Cañada College where she is on the soccer team, Kristy has been a kindergarten teacher at Redwood City’s Hoover Community School for 23 years., and Alexander is head coach for Varsity Girls Soccer at Redwood City’s Woodside High School.
Redwood City’s youth soccer landscape changed yet again on July 15th when JASA and Juventus, the club Franklin and Noe’s teams had been affiliated with the first time they coached together, merged to become the JSC Soccer Club.
The merger happened in part because Franklin and Noe were victims of their own success. Being responsible for hundreds of kids on dozens of teams, while holding down full-time jobs–they said they’d no longer enjoy the work if they got paid–made it impossible for them to give the administrative aspects of their youth program the attention it required.
JSC has hired staff to do some of the jobs that once were done by volunteers. As a result, families pay more than in the past, though Franklin says it’s still less than other clubs charge. Franklin’s official title is community liaison. He continues to walk Red Morton’s fields six days a week and he insists that he will continue to fight to ensure that every kid who wants to play soccer will play, regardless of their ability to pay.
Noe, meanwhile, is the assistant coach for his daughter’s soccer team and the coach for his grandson’s team and has two more grandkids who he’ll start coaching as soon as they’re old enough to dribble a soccer ball.
Noe didn’t vote for the merger, but, now that it happened, he’s accepted it. “Soccer’s is my therapy, my medicine. I’ll stick with it no matter what.”
Noe’s grandson Javis, Noe, Noe’s daughter Camilla, and Noe’s grandson Isiah after Noe’s grandson’s team won a local tournament. Noe was the team’s coach.
