By Dylan Butler
There are two things Juan Vera holds dear in life: his family and soccer. And the Elmhurst resident has combined his two loves to form Vera’s Soccer, a one-of-a-kind youth soccer club.
Vera’s Soccer, which originated in 1997, is unique because it is completely family run.
Juan Vera coaches three of the four teams and his son Juan Pablo coaches the other. His wife, Rosario, is the bookkeeper, handling all of the mundane details of the club, and his other three children, daughter, Viviana, and sons, Victor and Juan Jr., not only play on the teams but help out whenever possible.
“I am very proud of what my husband does because I know for a fact that he gives everything, he gives more than 100 percent of himself to the kids, to the games, to the coaching,” Rosario Vera said. “He really cares about the kids, and he tries his best in helping them in any way possible.”
That’s because the approximately 60 players who make up Vera’s four boys’ teams (U-10, U-12, U-16, U-19) remind Juan Vera of himself when he was a youth soccer player. Primarily Hispanic from Corona, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Flushing, the players are mostly underprivileged financially and can’t afford luxuries such as cleats and shin pads.
When Vera was growing up in Bolivia, he was a very good soccer player, even competing in a youth game before rival clubs Strongest and Bolivar battled in front of a packed stadium of thousands.
But orphaned at a young age, Vera didn’t have the financial backing other players did and couldn’t afford to continue playing soccer.
“When I was young I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a coach who gave me support, so that’s why I stay with this,” Vera said. “They are good kids in soccer, but they don’t have money, they don’t have anything.”
Resourceful with his hands, Vera is the MacGyver of soccer. He watches hours of training videos and makes his team’s training equipment. When other clubs throw away what they deem useless soccer balls, Vera collects them, re-pads the insides and re-stitches them for his team.
“Always what I take from there, I bring it back and give to my kids,” said Vera, who traveled to Ecuador and is currently in Brazil to learn more coaching techniques. “We don’t have money so we make it ourselves.”
Vera’s Soccer, whose home base literally is the Veras’ Elmhurst apartment, has had its fair share of success on the soccer field.
The U-16 team finished first in the Cosmopolitan Junior Soccer League’s ‘B’ division this year and the U-12s competed in the ‘A’ division.
The club has traveled to Ecuador and Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where it finished third in a tournament.
Vera’s got its beginnings six years ago when Vera coached a small group of neighborhood kids at the small park on Broadway in Elmhurst.
“He went and got his coaching license and we started with the kids from the block,” Rosario Vera said of Juan. “Our first team was all ages and we didn’t even have shirts or uniforms, so my husband coached this older team and they gave us their shirts.”
Vera then joined the Big Apple League, a Flushing Meadow Corona Park-based Spanish soccer league, before moving on to the CJSL. Although at times it can be hectic juggling the soccer club with her responsibilities at home, Rosario said getting to spend time with her children is what makes it all worthwhile.
“With everything going on with the violence, it’s just so scary and I’m very grateful to the lord that I’m with my kids seven days a week and I know where they are at all times,” she said. “It is a headache, but it’s a blessing.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
