Your badge and name are unique; can you tell us who designed your badge and what influenced the naming convention?
A former player, Max Rose, designed it for us in lieu of dues in our inaugural season. He graduated from the college of creative studies, went to the same HS as Mehmed and Zuhair, so we had him do his thing. We were even able to reward Max by going through the copyright process and got it approved! So that was both new to us and very cool, so we can officially put the copyright logo on our badge.

Our name comes from inspiration of “MK Dons”, and being so close to Lake St. Clair, we decided “LK St. Clair” would match that convention, and would offer us another short name of “LK” as most people refer to us as.

We wanted so badly to be named after our county, our town, etc. similar to European teams, BUT we realized that the body of water beside us defined our region even more.

The club was founded in 2017 - incorporated in March and got your non-profit status just a month later - what inspired you to start a brand-new soccer team and how much work was already underway before you were incorporated?
We had done the alumni game for L’Anse Creuse High School in 2015 as a way to raise funds for the program. We initially started this since we had an issue with “Pay-to-Play” in a public-school setting, and decided that we could do something about it. After the second one, more people became interested in continuing to play so we looked to start a team in summer of 2017.

As a side note, since 2015, we have raised nearly $5k for the program, and many schools in our area have replicated the same model. We have larger plans yet for this.

Other than knowing about 10-15 players who were interested in playing from local indoor leagues, alumni program, and group of friends, and being accepted into the league we wanted to join, nothing else. In late February of 2017, we started the Michigan nonprofit application and shortly after we became a 501c3, and took the field early April for tryouts. Then it just kept going as we continued to see potential in the program.

You began play at L'anse Creuse HS, then onto Macomb Community College and now you're working on building your own home. Was having your own facility always a part of the plan? Can you explain the process of hunting down property and how to go about researching grants to buy it?
After Macomb Community College (2018), we were at Total Sports Washington (2019), which is now the Michigan Stars Sports Center.

Absolutely, after year 1 we knew that for long term sustainability, our own spot was the goal. That’s when we approached Mt. Clemens, a neighboring city to where we grew up in Harrison Township, to discuss plans to make this possible. We learned that in 2017, the inaugural season, 70% of our budget was field rental. Here we had multiple options:

Bum off fields (not pay for rentals) and just show up to practice and/or play
continue to rent and never get a return, as essentially every playable field in Macomb County, would have $100/hr rental fees, just for the field, with no lights, bathrooms, ability to charge. If you wanted any of those, costs skyrocketed. Especially when you wanted to charge for tickets to get in.
or use the money we would rent to just put towards a community field, to improve the community, inspire the next generation of players, and be able to use it for our purposes too

Hunting down property. We talked to literally everybody. Everybody is “interested” but not many people follow through. We approached the city with an idea and the conversations started, stopped, started, stopped, ultimately until we had more serious convos on how to raise money, and once we raised $20k in 2019, people understood that we meant business and had a vision. Grants - NETWORKING! We were extremely lucky in 2018 to connect with a local nonprofit that helps other nonprofits, through a leadership program that Mehmed had been in so explaining to her what we wanted to do, she started to be on the lookout for grants. We got the first grant in 2019 - GM Grant - then we won a social media contest for our local bank (which we consider a grant as well) for this field. In 2020, we started the construction and are hoping that by June 2021, we are able to use it! In 2021, we continue to go after such grants and opportunities to further our mission. Our mission is that we are here to offer youth programming from camps, recreational and competitive programs, on land we hope to contribute to in the community, with our adult program as leaders and mentors for the youth.

Despite being a fairly new organization, what has been the club's most exciting soccer-related success? Cup finals, semi-finals?
USASA Region II Runner up + State Cup Runner Up – It was a fun bonding experience with the guys, but ultimately it was all business in a weekend (and we’re) hoping to continue runs like that in the future.

You'll be joining the Midwest Premier League this season - are you keeping a reserve side in the MPSL? You've also got a women's squad! Are they staying in the MPSL or do you have plans to expand to UWS or WPSL someday?
No reserve side for MPSL on the men’s side. Stretching us thin in terms of volunteers. If we are going to do it, it needs to be run exactly like the women’s program (mentioned below) where we have a separate group of people to run it and manage it (paperwork).

Women’s side is staying in the MPSL - we’ve talked about moving them too, but since they are relatively new, we want to grow the squad and learn of their aspirations before jumping into the next level of UWS2. If the girls want to play together for several years and what we’re giving them is enough and they want that, then that’s okay. Ultimately, if we push them into something they don’t want, then we’re not listening to our stakeholders. It’s easy to put a team out on the field, but doing it right is what we’re aiming to do.

2020 was a tough year to play soccer in, what will define success in 2021?
To be honest, despite the fact that we really didn’t play, we had a large community impact. We distributed over 300 soccer kits, held free camps (social distanced, masks, so much sanitizer and wipes), and then continued with connecting with community leaders. We contributed to local census and voter registration efforts as well. 2020 was a year of reflection. We really got to sit down and think, reflect on who we are, what we want to do, and who we want to do it for. Now that we know who we are as an organization, it’ll help us shape what kind of team we are on the field as well.
Success in 2021 will be:

Continuing to offer free youth camps to underserved communities in Macomb County
Getting more grants
Starting our youth recreational program
1. Hopefully on the field we’re building!
Completing a phase of field construction where we will be able to play games
Offering adult recreational leagues as a way to generate income for our program portfolio
Generating revenue through further sponsorship opportunities
kicking off with our adult teams.

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