So tell me about yourself, Noah. What's your background?
My name is Noah Toumert, and I am from Cleveland. I grew up playing soccer in Cleveland at every level and when my youth soccer days were over, I got involved in soccer here in the United States in whatever form was available. My employment for the last decade or so been in soccer and nonprofit digital marketing and brand development. Some people may have read soccer articles on the blog I ran in college, The First Eleven, or signed the Call for Reform at USSF I wrote in 2016. Nowadays, my day job is as the Content Creation Program Manager at The Refugee Response here in Ohio City and in my freelance work I run the social media accounts of a few current and past USMNT/USWNT players.

What inspired you to create this club?
Starting a club like The City of Ohio has been on my radar for years. When you grow up playing the sport and have an even somewhat critical eye, the glaring issue of access to the game in the US is unavoidable. Especially being the son of an immigrant who always educated me on how the game was managed around the world, my relationship with soccer in the United States has been influenced through the light of our failures. That was further exacerbated when I moved back to my hometown a few years ago and took my job at The Refugee Response. Immediately, I was introduced to a community with immense passion for soccer that had virtually no access to the institutions of the sport in our city. Things developed naturally from there, and I was excited when I thought that there was an opportunity to authentically build Cleveland's first urban soccer club. And that excitement compounded when I was able to build some partnerships with local non-profits and schools and I realized that we could offer free-to-play youth soccer for Cleveland's newcomer communities.

What's the main idea behind it?
Soccer is the world's game for a reason: It's simple. So, for me, it's wholly unacceptable for communities in this country that love the game to not have access to organized play. The quickest way to remedy the issue is to organize in your own community, so that's what we're doing. Our end goal is to be a movement incubator, organizing teams or leagues for anyone in downtown Cleveland that wants to play. But we're starting with the community we know best.

Ultimately we will last because of our connection to our community. We have that at the center of our priority. That, and we are in a very hungry and fervent soccer market which we are completely in love with.

What's the immigrant community like in Cleveland, can you describe the situations they live in?
Cleveland is a city of immigrants; it always has been. And a big part of our brand and name is to highlight the city's history and the "original newcomers" that settled The City of Ohio in 1818. Because of our city's international history, our newcomer population isn't a monolith and there's no one situation in which refugees and immigrants live. Downtown we have large pockets of refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, and in Year 1 we're working with lots of people from Eastern Africa. On the near-east, Cleveland's incredible Asia Town is home to Asian immigrants from tons of countries. On in our suburbs there are immigrants and refugees from all over the world. And that's not even mentioning the historic flow of eastern-European immigrants we have moving into our Ukrainian, Croatian and Russian communities, which all have their own established soccer teams and leagues stretching back decades.

Mainly, the refugees that we're working with in Year 1 live in neighborhoods that the city of Cleveland has de-prioritized for decades.

(Honestly, I'm a little uncomfortable with this question because of how vulnerable these populations are and how unique each one is. I don't want to say "They live in squalor" because while it may be true for some families, it's not for other members of the community.)

In what ways can soccer serve this community?
In the Cleveland area, we have a massive youth soccer system that thousands of families take part of every year. These urban newcomer communities are almost uniformly underserved - or flat out ignored - by the system, because the goal of the system isn't to spread the game. It's to generate revenue for club owners. With no cost-incentive, the skills the kids build in youth soccer aren't accessible to Cleveland's downtown communities unless they have the ability to drive out several times a week and play in our suburban leagues. Which, spoiler alert, almost no one does.

Anyone that has played organized sports understands the benefits it can have. There are hundreds of reports that show the link between youth sports and academic success / character building, I won't re-articulate what we all know to be true. I think what's important to understand is that for people that are in a new city and country to integrate there have to be touch points that connect the newcomers with the existing community they're moving in to. Soccer isn't going to be a panacea that fixes all of the issues refugees or immigrants might face when they come to Cleveland, but it can provide structure in their lives and help kids see the pathways to becoming successful adults. To illustrate this, this Summer we'll be running a free, 10-week soccer camp for our near-west side refugee community. While the soccer itself won't change any lives, the program allows us to build a consistent space for our support agencies to interact with kids. Like, the kids that love sports but don't care about school aren't always going to sign up for The Refugee Response's Youth Mentoring Program. But when soccer is the focus, we can engage and learn what support kids need that we otherwise wouldn't interact with. It's a common interest that's a gateway into new lives.

Is the primary youth programs? Or will there be equal focus on the adult team?
The primary focus right now is youth programs, as our primary focus is to meet our communities' needs. We're hoping to operate two adult teams in 2021 because there was interest, as well as the long-term desire to build a club that has a ladder from youth to adult so the kids can envision themselves being part of this community when they're 18+. Our female side, Team Tokoss, was actually organized by a refugee community member last summer, so we connected with them to help them play more and play at a higher level. It's hard to say what the future holds exactly.

Why did you choose the NOSL?
We chose the NOSL because they mirror our value of access. Because of the league footprint and the cost of things like league fees, we knew the NOSL was a pragmatic choice that would allow us to offer even more organized play in Cleveland. The guys who organize the league have stressed from the jump that the goal is to create a league that clubs like ours can join without it being a massive strain on our resources. Their goal is to promote and develop the game in Northern Ohio, so it was a no-brainer. And everyone from the NOSL has been a dream to work with, so when the pandemic shut down our plans last year we knew we wanted to stick with them for 2021.

Anything else we should know about your club?
I think what I'd want people to know about our club is that we're doing this day by day. Sure, I have my own grand visions for where this might go, but realistically we're waking up every morning to solve the new problem of the day and push for access however we can. To organize something like this in your community, you just need to have passion and resolve. Get connected with local community groups, gauge general interest, get some gear and start kicking around. You'll be stunned at how quickly things like this grow when you authentically build from the real problems communities face.

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