Community
July 17, 2017
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 11
Portland World Cup builds community
PORTLAND WORLD CUP. Young people on
Team Spice practice at Lynchview Park in southeast
Portland. The players are training for the upcoming
Portland World Cup soccer tournament, scheduled for
July 21 and 22 at Delta Park. The annual tournament
aims to build community, celebrate diversity and cul-
tures from around the world, and help integrate refu-
gee and immigrant communities into their new lives
in the Rose City. (AR Photos/Ryan Nakano)
By Ryan Nakano
The Asian Reporter
ut near S.E. 164th Avenue in the
heat of the day, a soccer ball is
kicked around, a language
translated, and 10 teenage girls share a
field with a common goal — to have fun.
“Team Spice.”
Aye Chan May laughs when the name
comes up.
“See that down there,” she points to a
lone tree at the edge of Lynchview Park in
southeast Portland, “It’s an apple tree. As
soon as it began to grow and bear fruit, we
went after it bringing our own mixture of
chili, salt, and other spices from home to
season the apples as a snack before
practice.”
May, a captain for Team Spice, smiles as
she watches her teammates continue to
scrimmage under the supervision of
coaches Betsy Hornstein and Heidi Kreis.
“Also, all of us are refugees from
Southeast Asia, so all of us love spicy food.”
In 2010, May and her family moved from
a refugee camp in Thailand to Portland,
Oregon.
Since then, more than 7,400 new refu-
gees have arrived in Oregon, according to
data collected by the Oregon Department
of Human Services.
Like May and her family, many of the
refugees who settle in the greater Portland
metropolitan area face the challenge of
learning a new language and finding a
sustainable line of work with very little
experience or educational background.
And then, there is the soccer field, the
one Team Spice works up a sweat on two
days per week. The one that invites youth
from all different backgrounds to share
space and begin to form community. The
one they use to prepare to compete in the
Portland World Cup, a free two-day soccer
tournament for immigrant and refugee
youth organized by the Parks for New
Portlanders program.
The goal of the tournament: To allow
those who are new to Portland know that
Portland belongs to them. Its resources, its
fields, all of it belongs to them, at least
that’s the way Portland World Cup
organizer Som Subedi sees it.
The tournament that kicks off Friday,
July 21 at 9:00am at Delta Park, started
back in 2009.
One year earlier, Subedi had arrived in
Portland after living as a refugee in Nepal,
fleeing Bhutan during the “One Nation,
One People” policy that expelled the
Lhotshampa people in the early ’90s.
Subedi, who grew up playing soccer with
upcycled plastic bags in the forest near the
refugee camp, felt lost upon his arrival in
Portland.
“There was no one to tell us where the
clubs were, where soccer was played, or
how to get a permit for a park,” Subedi
said.
Out of necessity, Subedi began to
organize.
In March of 2010, Iraqi, Bhutanese,
Burmese, Russian, and Turkish youth
O
gathered at Mill Park in southeast
Portland to play pickup soccer.
One month later, plans for the Portland
World Cup were in motion through the
grassroots organizing of Subedi, Alejandro
Vidalles, Anne Downing, and Jamal Dar.
This year, 22 teams will take the field,
79 games will be played, and six city
bureaus will take part as both sponsors
and coaching staff for youth between the
ages of 14 and 21.
Needless to say, holding the annual
community event takes the efforts of more
than just Subedi and the original Portland
World Cup organizers to pull off.
The Parks for New Portlanders program
uses a group of nine youth ambassadors
speaking more than 11 languages to reach
out to different communities in the greater
Portland area. They fill out registration
forms and draw on local organizations for
support.
In late May, youth began registering for
the tournament — some already tied to
teams, others placed on teams looking for
more players.
“Offsides,” Portland Police Bureau coach
Betsy Hornstein calls out at the evening
practice at Lynchview Park.
The girls on Team Spice stop their
scrimmage. Hornstein begins to explain
the position of the last defender and what
it means for the offense pushing forward to
receive the ball.
May, one of the team captains,
translates the rule for the others in Karen
and broken Bhutanese. They all laugh
Dar, one of the original organizers of the
Portland World Cup who is also the
executive director of the African Youth and
Community Organization. “Soccer is team
oriented, community is team oriented.
That’s our style. We don’t do things alone;
we do things together.”
Dar hopes the tournament will return to
its grassroots origins, that one day it will
become a full blown league. But for now,
the city-sponsored celebration continues to
draw youth from the community to share
in intercultural dialogue in the form of the
universal language of soccer.
“Soccer is the international hook to
bring all these youth and family together.
Now with the political climate, soccer is a
political hook,” Subedi said. “There is a
fear among immigrant community
members here, but soccer is able to bring
all of us together. It takes the fear
away.”
The Portland World Cup takes place
Friday and Saturday, July 21 and 22, at
Portland’s Delta Park, located at 10737 N.
Union Court in Portland. Members of the
community are invited to cheer the youth
on at the tournament, which has soccer
matches scheduled all day from 9:00am to
8:00pm. To learn more, call Som Subedi at
(503) 260-2487 or visit <www.portland
oregon.gov/parks/article/553563>.
about the English idiom for “cherry-
picking.”
“What makes the event great is that it’s
driven by community, by individuals,” said
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All solutions available at
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