Thousands of kids descend upon Dick’s Sporting Goods Park every season to watch their hometown team, the Colorado Rapids, play soccer at the highest levels. Sunburns on their necks, grass stains on their knees, some still wearing their cleats from an all-day tournament in Aurora or Westminster or Broomfield, they watch intently for a deft pass or a clever turn from their burgundy-clad heroes. Throughout the stands, fathers whisper to sons and mothers to daughters “Work hard enough, and someday, that could be you.”
But there are 73,000 youth soccer players in Colorado, and not all of them will go on to play soccer at the highest youth levels.