Greeley youth soccer scene still steadily growing 50 years later ...Saudi Arabia

Every so often, Kenneth H. Humphrey takes a nice leisurely weekend cruise around Greeley.

He’s overtaken by a sense of gratitude at what he sees.

City park after city park, full of young boys and girls playing rec league soccer.

Plenty other competitive matches take place within high school facilities in the fall and spring.

He gazes upon these scenes the way a father beams with pride at the sight of a child that has gone on to achieve feats beyond what even the most hopeful of parents could have anticipated.

Naturally, many people refer to Humphrey as the “father of Greeley soccer.”

And in the 50 years since Humphrey founded Greeley’s first youth soccer league — the Greeley Soccer Association — the area’s soccer scene has matured into something special.

“One time, one of my sons said, ‘Dad, come on. Let’s take a drive. Where were the soccer fields back when you got started?’ ” Humphrey said. “A lot of those same fields are still being used. … It’s hard to fathom the feeling of driving by a field where kids are playing a game that you know you were responsible for helping get started.

“I’ve always said, ‘Somebody would have done it.’ It was inevitable, because soccer just couldn’t be kept down.”

That somebody who did bring organized youth soccer to Greeley was Humphrey, no doubt with plenty of help along the way.

Laying the foundation

As much of a pioneer as Humphrey is, he’s quick to shower gratitude upon all the people who have been perhaps as influential throughout the years — former Bootleggers Soccer Club board member and president, and soccer dad, Andrew Borg, former Bootleggers/Northern Colorado Soccer Club director of operations Lynda McManus, former coach and mentor of many young athletes Sam Chuenchit, etc., etc.

“If you don’t have that kind of support, you’re not going to be very successful,” Humphrey said. “That’s why I was very fortunate, because I had people that were as interested as I was in doing this.”

Humphrey approached Greeley’s city council in the fall of 1974 about the idea of starting a youth soccer program through the city’s recreation department.

At the time, he didn’t have any takers.

“The council members said, ‘We can’t afford to do that right now. Our budget is pretty well set,’ ” Humphrey recalled. “But one gentleman said, ‘We can take money from the kids tackle football program and start the soccer program.’

“I said, ‘If you do that, we’re going to be dead in the water to begin with.’ ”

A mere half-year later, the Greeley youth soccer scene was anything but dead in the water.

About 29 people — several of whom were foreign-born — came to the Greeley Soccer Association’s initial meeting.

The first soccer league launched with 108 athletes in fourth through sixth grade.

Humphrey, a former longtime educator and coach of a variety of youth sports, didn’t recall anything else that resembled an organized youth soccer program in Greeley at the time that he founded the Greeley Soccer Association in the spring of 1975.

“It was a great time to start; I think there was a hunger for it,” said Humphrey, who was the principal at Arlington Elementary School when he launched the GSA. “There were a lot of people who didn’t understand what soccer was, and some of our tackle football people didn’t want anything to do with it.”

Like a snowball rolling downhill

In the years after the launch of the GSA in 1975, Humphrey received calls from representatives from the smaller towns around Weld County asking for help starting youth soccer programs of their own.

By the 1976-77 soccer season, the GSA had expanded to 300 players — 60 girls and 240 boys — with 55 adult volunteers.

At that same time, a GSA all-star team was formed. It was the first highly competitive local youth soccer team with 14 boys ages 13-19.

By 1978-79, the GSA, now with 675 athletes, evolved into Young America Soccer, and the Greeley Recreation Department adopted the program, creating Greeley Young America Soccer.

Around that same time, in 1977, another GSA offspring, of sorts, was formed: the competitive Bootleggers Soccer Club.

In contrast with the more casual approach of Greeley rec soccer, the Bootleggers created an environment for young soccer players to receive top-notch competition and training, for an affordable price, at the club level.

The club became the Northern Colorado Soccer Club in 2007 before partnering with the renowned Rush Soccer program — which has chapters throughout the world — forming Northern Colorado Rush in 2017.

Also, a handful of years after the GSA formed, Greeley-Evans School District 6 adopted its first high school varsity soccer programs, with boys soccer in the fall of 1983 and girls soccer that following spring. Today, five Greeley high schools compete in varsity soccer across various Colorado High School Activities Association classifications.

One of those schools, Greeley Central, produced standout Kortne Ford, who was the first member of the Colorado Rapids’ Homegrown program to start in a professional game in their professional debut for the Major League Soccer team. The MLS’s Homegrown program allows teams to sign players directly from their youth academies to the pro roster, bypassing the traditional draft process.

Humble beginnings

McManus ran the Bootleggers/Northern Colorado Soccer Club for 22 years before retiring in September.

During her long tenure within the local soccer scene, she developed a strong friendship with Humphrey, even playing a round of golf or two with him on occasion.

Knowing Humphrey’s personality, McManus said it’s no surprise Humphrey would take the initiative to introduce a completely new sport to Greeley’s youth and give them something other than football to play on the city’s many grass fields.

“He’s a doer,” said McManus, who held a variety of positions with the Bootleggers/Northern Colorado Soccer Club throughout the decades. “If there is something he wants to do, he’s not someone who will sit by and wait for somebody else to do it. He’s definitely passionate about what he does, and he’s passionate about kids.”

Humphrey recalls the occasional puzzled look from a passerby in the community during a soccer practice when he started the GSA 50 years ago.

“ ‘What the hell is this? What are you doing? Are you playing on the same field as the football team?’ — There was some of that but not nearly as much as you might have thought,” Humphrey said. “I was really pleased by the reception. … Nobody seemed to be upset, which was nice.”

Humphrey recalls he and some of the parents building the first goals out of fishing nets from a local sporting goods store and two-by-fours. It was a labor of love for a sport that Humphrey was all too eager to share with the youth of Greeley and northern Colorado.

“I think it’s the best game, overall,” said Humphrey, who first fell in love with soccer while living and teaching in Europe, notably in England. “Kids can shine individually, but yet, you still have to be a team member. Nobody is a ‘Pele.’ But, you can try to be one.”

Humphrey has taught young students, and lived, all throughout the world.

He is originally from Pennsylvania, and he moved to Greeley — alongside his wife of nearly 60 years — Sylvia, in 1970 to become the principal of Maplewood Elementary School.

One could classify Humphrey — along with coaches like Borg and Chuenchit — a founding father of Greeley soccer.

“He was instrumental in bringing soccer (to Weld County),” McManus said. “And you can’t talk about Ken Humphrey without talking about Andrew Borg. What Andrew Borg did for the soccer environment was equally important. Along with Sam Chuenchit, those are the three Lifetime Achievement recipients.

“Those three were instrumental in the area of soccer. And we joke with Ken: he’s not dead. He’s still living.”

Just getting started

While Borg and Chuenchit live on only through the undeniable legacies they’ve left behind, Humphrey — at 84 years of age — is still alive, with a razor sharp mind and an unflappable passion for soccer.

He’s lived to see soccer in Colorado, Weld County and Greeley begin to evoke levels of fandom and support closer to that of Europe, Central and South America, and the rest of the world.

And it would appear soccer in northern Colorado is merely just scratching the surface of its limitless potential.

This past spring, Northern Colorado Rush became Colorado Rush Norco. Now the club falls under Colorado Rush’s 501(c)(3), receiving benefits granted to nonprofits. According to the organization’s website, Rush has a global reach that makes it the world’s largest youth soccer organization.

Rush’s increased commitment and investment within Greeley and northern Colorado were spurred by the community’s passion and prominence toward soccer, which have grown steadily since Humphrey first introduced youth soccer to the area in 1975.

“There are a lot of people moving to northern Colorado, there’s a lot of growth and, as a result, there’s a lot of opportunity for youth soccer,” Colorado Rush executive director Mark Hiemenz said. “We thought there was a lot of opportunity for quality soccer there, both on the female and male side. We actually have kids come from Greeley to play for some of our Colorado Rush national platforms, teams in the Denver metro area.”

Club soccer players in Greeley and Weld County have a network of resources unlike ever before as a result of the former Bootleggers’/Northern Colorado Soccer Club’s partnership with Colorado Rush.

Greeley is ideally located in the middle of growing, heavily populated areas like the north Denver metro area and Fort Collins, it is a rapidly growing community in its own right, and it features a diverse population that includes many immigrants from countries where soccer is king — all factors that Hiemenz said were attractive as Colorado Rush looked to expand its presence within the state.

As for what the future may hold for a vibrant soccer community that Humphrey and the GSA laid the foundation for 50 years ago: Hiemenz would like to see young people gravitate toward soccer to start to develop skills on the pitch at even younger ages, pre-middle school.

“If you look at the whole landscape of youth soccer, you ultimately would like to go for 5- to 10-year-old boys and girls and help them to develop a passion for the game,” he said. “Once you get them involved and really excited about what soccer gives them — with more than just being able to kick the ball into the back of the net — the game sells itself.”

An everlasting legacy

For 50 years, the local club soccer scene has provided a fun, safe and organized environment for Greeley’s youth to recreate outside, belong to a community and hone their skills while playing the world’s most popular sport.

Yet, when Humphrey first conceived the idea of starting the Greeley Soccer Association a half-century ago, few local residents had seen the sport up close and even fewer had ever participated in it.

Nowadays, it’s hard to navigate far within this sprawling city of about 115,000 residents without seeing a kid kicking around a ball or stepping on the pitch with 10 of his teammates during a highly competitive affair.

The legacy of the GSA remains highly visible today, as local parks are packed with rec league soccer games most summer weekends, while five high schools in Greeley host competitive varsity boys and girls programs during the school year.

Thanks to Humphrey, and many others, who have helped develop the sport in Greeley and Weld County over the past handful of decades, the soccer scene in northern Colorado has perhaps only begun to find its footing.

“It’s very gratifying to drive around town and see all the soccer that’s going on,” Humphrey said. “My wife (Sylvia) said, ‘I don’t want to see your gravestone. But if you don’t have a soccer ball on it, there’s something wrong.’

“I’ve been very lucky, because I had a lot of great people to work with, low pressure. The only pressure was to have fun and enjoy having a good, successful program.”

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