Your club looks brand new! What inspired making a new team and who's responsible?
The club was founded on the basis of trying to end pay-to-play in the men's game here in NYC. Our club motto is "All You Need Is Love" because we truly believe that that's all you should need in order to play this game, we all love, and it's the ethos behind everything we do. I am the co-founder of a nonprofit (Borbone Brigante/https://borbonebrigante.com/) and we were working on a project with another club that fell through, so we decided we could put the money toward creating our own club, starting our first competition this Spring in either a 9 aside Metro Soccer league or in the 11 aside Gotham Soccer League with the goal to have an over 30 team enter in the Cosmopolitan Soccer League next Fall. Honestly, our goal for the first full season in the over 30 division will be to win the National Over 30 Cup. Last season, in the CSL, a core group of my old club beat the eventual national cup champs 4-1 and drew the other finalists 1-1. Of the players on the pitch only 2 were under 30, and one of them was our goalkeeper, who left and now is another 30+ year old. I'm hoping that the majority of those guys will come over to the new club, but I also have feelers out to other over 30 players in the NYC area.

What inspired the colors and elements of your badge?
Our colors, name, and design are all connected to the geography of NYC, especially our little corner of South Brooklyn, Bay Ridge. Bay Ridge was founded by the Dutch in 1657 and of course the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is a massive landmark for us. It also connects the two boroughs of Brooklyn (where I live now and play) and Staten Island (where I grew up playing as a teammate of NYRB2 Manager John Wolyniek). The name of the neighborhood was changed to Bay Ridge in the mid 1800's because of the rise of Yellow Fever. The inhabitants thought the name Yellow Hook would keep people away because of the connection to the disease. The colors are the colors of Brooklyn, our home, but don't listen to google) who use the Brooklyn nets colors of Black and White (eyes rolling). SV is a Dutch prefix meaning Sport Association (Sport Vereniging) a nod to the first European settlers of the region. As a Sport Association, it also leaves us open to having other teams in other sports as long as we can secure the proper funding. One of our board members sole responsibility will be to reach out to major US corporations who share our values, and we hope to grow that way.

Some teams like to put out scarves or shirts to help keep the lights on, do you have any plans for merchandise?
Merchandising will be a huge part of how we keep things running. We already have a secondary badge (I'll attach with the original) for a black out kit and are working on a Peter Max inspired "All You Need Is Love" kit and will be debuting next season with a Unity Kit. I originally designed this kit for Brooklyn City FC, my son's club, but the club decided not to go through with it, so we've rebranded it for SV Yellow Hook and it will be our third kit for the next two years. We've partnered with Hummel North America, and you can see the template for the Unity kit on their Instagram feed, though again, it will be rebranded for my club. I'm inspired by clubs like Providence City and Forward Madison and my pipe dream is to have our merchandising game so on point that it attracts more corporate sponsors and enables us to get a team into one of the semi pro leagues (NISA/USL2) if the funds come in. Of course, if that ever were to happen, we'd absolutely stay true to our roots and ALWAYS have an amateur side in the CSL that will never ask players for a dime.

As for our secondary badge (black out badge which will feature on black scarves, beanies, hats and tees eventually) comes from the following narrative I've created loosely based around the history of Bay Ridge: "When the first Dutch settlers landed in the NYC area in 1636, it wasn’t long before they found their way to the beautiful shores on the southeast corner of Long Island, the section known as Yellow Hook. From 1657, the people of the Yellow Hook section of the town of New Utrecht, soon to be incorporated into the larger Brooklyn, would host farmers from across the NYC area who would gather here every Sunday to enjoy the beauty of the landscape and play their regular game like modern voetbal. These matches, the only outlet for these hard-working people, would be played on the plentiful grass spaces in the pastoral town. Games would be at times as large as 25 a-side to accommodate all who wanted to play, from all corners of the region, and would last until sundown. Once dark, legend has it, a particularly aggressive owl would appear out of the large group of beech trees adjacent to the playing field, and "hunt" the ball, claiming it for himself. The exhausted and now frightened participants would then scatter and reassemble at the local tavern to wash down their fatigue with some of the area's finest ale and discuss some of the day's game's talking points. Most Monday mornings the ball, a sewn-up cowhide exterior stuffed with hay and grass, would be found torn up and inside one of the rudimentary goals, and the locals would take turns collecting it and repairing it. This weekly gathering occurred until the British came to NY and outlawed the game altogether, for fear it could unite the primarily Dutch farmers against British rule. We as a club embody the power and spirit of football for all that the town’s original inhabitants lived by. We pay homage to the owl and town whose name and visage still live on in local folklore amongst old timers who still frequent the tavern that stands very near to where the beautiful game was shared and loved all those years ago. We are, and always will be, The Night Owls of SV Yellow Hook.”

What are your plans for 2022 and what is your long-term goal?
What makes our free to play approach slightly different is that in lieu of payments, we want players to give back to the community. We see professionals doing it all the time, but amateurs not so much. We've partnered with a local non-profit (Bay Ridge Cares) and we're going to be asking our players to regularly gather as a team/club to provide hands-on assistance to BRC, a group that does tremendous grassroots community work. They are run by volunteers and do so much good for the community. As a teacher in the neighborhood for 20+ years (recently retired) I've worked with BRC in the past. They've single handedly kept some of my students' families afloat by providing food, groceries and helping around the apartments for many of them. One boy in particular, an Egyptian immigrant, was hit and nearly killed by a car while riding his bike. BRC went grocery shopping for the family (not only paid for it but gathered the list from the mom and did the shop) while he was in hospital recovering. This is the kind of thing that I feel is vital for our club to be a part of, and players who play for us should WANT to do things like this. Arguably, even more important than the football itself. If we never win a single game, but can continue to do this as a club, together, I'll feel that we have become the most successful amateur club in the country.

Visit the club at svyellowhook.com

Follow SV Yellow Hook on Twitter HERE