5280 Magazine – May 2018

66 |^5280 |^ MAY 20^18

CULTURE

job as league organizer particularly chal-

lenging. “I took Spanish in high school,” he

says, “so I understand maybe 20 percent of

what they’re saying.”

No matter. We all came to play. The

Latino players with their families in tow,

their kids taking over the ield between

league games. The twentysomething

lifties working of yesterday’s hangovers.

hat one Eastern European guy with the

incomprehensible footwork.

a wall, but based on my experience here, I

suggest an alternative. For the estimated

$22 billion price of building that wall on

our country’s southern border, we could

create nearly 37,000 soccer domes across the

nation in an efort to bring people together.

THERE’S NO REAL REASON for a town of about

1,900 residents to have an expensive, year-

round soccer facility or for the teams that

play there to come from as far away as Lead-

ville. Granby’s ield exists thanks, in part, to

that generous, anonymous donor at whose

motives I’m left to guess.

Brad McClain, the president of the Grand

County Soccer Club, however, has ofered

a clue to the donor’s rationale. McClain

told me about the benefactor’s support for

a nonproit called Soccer Without Borders

(SWB), whose mission is “to use soccer as

a vehicle for positive change, providing

underserved youth with a toolkit to over-

come obstacles to growth, inclusion, and

personal success.”

In Colorado, the group operates out of

Greeley; its website recognizes in soccer

the power to welcome strangers. SWB

gives those newcomers a place that feels

like home, a chance to succeed, some-

times even to heal. Friendships made on

the field often extend well beyond the

pitch, and I’ve witnessed the sport’s charm

countless times during a lifetime of play.

McClain sees the same results in his club

teams and on the girls team he helps coach

at Granby’s Middle Park High School

(none of which are connected with SWB).

“hat’s where you see the interaction,” he

says. “It takes the generational introduc-

tion of these kids, irst becoming friends in

middle school and high school, up to where

they get together as adults to play. Because

of soccer, there’s a stronger connection

between them.”

So there it sits, Granby’s big tent, a

magnet for people of all kinds to gather

and play. Benny Perez, the 22-year-old

manager of the adult league’s Cloud City

FC, just might be the perfect example of

how the facility can impact lives. He went

to high school in Granby but now lives in

Leadville. Still, every hursday night during

the fall and spring seasons, he and his Lake

County teammates, all Latino, make the

100-mile drive to Granby’s dome. “Soccer,”

he says, “is what gets us there.” m

Martin J. Smith is the author of five novels

and four nonfiction books, including the essay

collection Mr. Las Vegas Has a Bad Knee. He lives

in Granby with his wife and rat terrier, Scottie.

Email him at [email protected].

he dome was once surrounded by scrub

and mud, but the town convinced local non-

profits, foundations, and corporations to

pony up enough cash to make it the cen-

terpiece of a recreational complex. When

the spring season opened on April 12 of

this year, the dome was lanked by a paved

parking lot, tennis courts, and a playground.

To me those improvements felt like prog-

ress. Of course, President Donald Trump

and many of his supporters suggest building

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