{"id":358040,"date":"2026-06-12T16:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T16:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/358040\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T16:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T16:35:16","slug":"an-oakland-soccer-program-helps-immigrant-youth-find-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/358040\/","title":{"rendered":"An Oakland Soccer Program Helps Immigrant Youth Find Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mildred, her teammate, said she admires Sharon\u2019s improvement over the last year. At one point, she said, Sharon didn\u2019t know how to kick a ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would tell her to have confidence and to not stop,\u201d said Mildred, 17, originally from Honduras.<\/p>\n

\"\"Coach Alexis Catt rallies her players during halftime of their league\u2019s final game of the season. After missing the playoffs last season, the team fought for a podium finish this spring. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The girls have come a long way: last season, their team didn\u2019t make the playoffs. This spring, as the 2026 FIFA World Cup<\/a> kicks off in the Bay Area, the girls set out to win third place.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the teams play for community \u2014 \u201ctheir sense of belonging,\u201d said Alexis Catt, who coaches the East Oakland high school team as part of a national nonprofit Soccer Without Borders.<\/p>\n

\"\"Left: One Soccer Without Borders girls team earned a medal in the playoffs. Right: The Soccer Without Borders alumni team, composed of former Soccer Without Borders players, huddles after a match in April. Although they get to compete in Soccer Without Borders\u2019s regular league, the alumni are responsible for training themselves. The team has become a tight-knit community for those who aged out of the high school program. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"Oakland Soccer Without Borders player Tatiana battles a Hayward player during the last game of the season. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The Bay Area location provides critical year-round support to newcomer refugee and immigrant youth across Alameda and San Francisco counties.<\/p>\n

The program combines zero-cost access to fields, gear and soccer training with dedicated mental health resources to support underserved youth in the Bay Area. Through a new program called Meet Me on the Pitch<\/a> and a collaboration with UCSF, coaches aim to provide comprehensive mental health support for the students on and off the field.<\/p>\n

\"\"Soccer Without Borders coaches Alexis Catt and Ney Lovato photographed at the Soccer Without Borders office. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very holistic approach,\u201d said Natalie Ramos, a program coordinator. On top of coaching, Ramos and other staff act as case managers and provide academic mentorship to their students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they need support in their classes, I can do that. If they\u2019re having trouble communicating with one of their teachers, I can help them with that,\u201d Ramos said.<\/p>\n

Ye-Htet Soe, co-director of Soccer Without Borders in the Bay Area, knows firsthand the difference soccer can make in a kid\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

He said he remembers his first time playing soccer in a refugee camp between Thailand and Burma. Instead of grass and cleats, the kids played shoeless in the dirt, with a ball wrapped in duct tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just so happy,\u201d he said. There were no lines to organize the field, but \u201cit was organized in our heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Ingrid, a Soccer Without Borders player, poses for a portrait with her boyfriend at Robert\u2019s Regional Park during an end-of-season team picnic. Alongside the stressors of navigating a new country and language, the students experience the universal highs and lows of the teenage experience: romance, friendship, and the uncertainty of the future. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"Loani (left) and Abyade, Soccer Without Borders players from the Purple Team, hang out with teammates and friends after a Saturday game at Oakland High. To increase accessibility, the program concentrates most games in a single day to alleviate the burden of traveling across the Bay on families who often have limited time and resources. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Years later, Soe said he hopes the program can provide the Bay Area\u2019s youth with the same opportunity to find joy on and off the pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoccer Without Borders is all about being part of something larger than you,\u201d Soe said.<\/p>\n

Using funding from the National Institute of Health, the Meet Me on the Pitch<\/a> study will enroll youth aged 14-21 over the next two years to formally explore how soccer can be used as a holistic way to support mental well-being.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Meet Me at the Pitch program, whose approach was informed by a youth advisory team,\u00a0 seeks to bring mental health support out of the clinical setting and onto the field where the kids have learned to build their own communities. The Youth Advisory Team helped pick activities, define relevant topics, and find the right language for discussing mental health. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"Soccer Without Borders Coach Natalie Ramos and Malak, a Youth Advisory Team member and a participant in the \u201cMeet me at the Pitch\u201d pilot program, ride past a cloud on a carousel at Six Flags during a program field trip. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The goal is to see whether programs like Soccer Without Borders can markedly improve mental health, academic support-seeking and social belonging among youth who participate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is already based on the DNA of what Soccer Without Borders has been doing for decades, really using soccer as a way to build community, as a way to build confidence,\u201d said Mara Decker, an associate professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF, who is leading the study.<\/p>\n

Decker said the intervention gives kids the opportunity to reflect on their goals and take advantage of guidance and mentorship to get there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we so rarely in our lives have the time to just pause and think about what we want to do and what are the steps we need to take to get there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Soccer Without Borders Coach Natalie Ramos (center) and Youth Advisory Team members Amar (left) and Malak pose for a portrait outside Oakland International High.<\/p>\n

Catt said she\u2019s gotten to see her players grow both as individuals and as a team since last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe create it as a developmental process. You don\u2019t have to be good, you don\u2019t get left behind,\u201d Catt continued. \u201cWe have kids who have never played before with kids who are on their youth national team in their own country, playing on the same team and both excelling together.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Mildred, the program provided a place to land when she moved to the U.S. last year to reunite with her family. On her first day of classes at a high school in East Oakland, she asked around about soccer teams. By her second, she was already playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes me feel free because I feel like [on the field] I can forget about my problems and make more friends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Soccer Without Borders alumni team celebrates after their championship title win in late May. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"Coach Benji arrived in Oakland at age 10 to reunite with his father. Benji says that being the only Mam speaker at his school in Oakland felt like landing on a different planet. Communicating felt nearly impossible. \u201cI can still remember those days\u2026 I cried a couple of times going to school,\u201d he said. He found his first community through soccer when friends from Burma and Vietnam invited him to join Soccer Without Borders. For him, working as a coach supporting for other kids experiencing what he went through fills him with pride. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"Sweet, a player on the Soccer Without Borders alumni team, wraps her shoulders with a commemorative T-shirt signed by her teammates to celebrate her high school graduation. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Sharon\u2019s entry into the sport was less immediate. She\u2019d been in the U.S. for three years before Mildred finally convinced her to join the team. But now she\u2019s hooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like a family. I feel really good when I play; I feel confident,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She struggled with being away from El Salvador when her grandfather passed away, but she said playing soccer helped her deal with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would come to practice, and it would make me feel good. I know he would feel good watching me play,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Left: Best friends Loani, Sharon and Mildred, Soccer Without Borders players from the Purple Team, pose for a portrait with their third-place medals after a grueling season. Right: Loani holds a soccer ball to show off her game-day nails. (Ximena Natera for Catchlight\/KQED)
\n\"\"\u201cI\u2019ve grown in here,\u201d said Reyna (left), about being part of the Purple Team at Soccer Without Borders. For Reyna, who graduated from high school at the end of May with a ceremony at the Paramount Theatre, being in the U.S. allowed her to take soccer more seriously, a game she had played since childhood in her native El Salvador. After graduation, Soccer Without Borders players can continue playing, either by joining the Alumni Team or staying one more year with their original team. For Reyna, the choice to keep playing was simple: \u201cThey are my family, I am part of them.\u201d This fall, she said, she has three things in her mind: Taking classes at Lainey College, finding a job and playing soccer.<\/p>\n

Together, the teammates ended the game with a hard-fought victory and a well-deserved third-place title. Catt said the biggest win comes from giving the players a place to grow and develop through the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they are coming from somewhere that doesn\u2019t speak the same language, it\u2019s hard to feel a part of something,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a pretty common theme with soccer \u2014 people say it\u2019s the same in every language.\u201d<\/p>\n

This project was produced jointly by KQED and the CatchLight Mental Health Visual Desk<\/a> initiative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ximena Natera contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mildred, her teammate, said she admires Sharon\u2019s improvement over the last year. At one point, she said, Sharon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-358040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}