Guest Spot: SPAM FC and the SPAM FC Foundation

The following article was written by Van Hong, a co-founder of the SPAM FC Scholarship Foundation. SPAM FC is an amateur club that play in the Minnesota Amateur Soccer League (MASL) and are well known for their fund which provides scholarships to soccer-playing youth in the Twin Cities. Hong wrote the piece below to further explain the foundation, its event, and how they’ve grown. Our previous piece on the club can be found at this link.

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“Let’s get four on it. Left! Left! V, one more step...one more!”

Bao would give me a thumbs up, after 15 seconds of yelling at me, and make an amazing save against a great free kick.

Walls don’t protect us from free kicks. It’s our incredibly athletic keeper, the fearless defenders, resilient midfielders and the productive forwards. Walls, for us, are nothing more than esthetics. They don’t really work. 

I play on a Minnesota Amateur Soccer League (MASL) Division 1 team called, “Spam Football Club” or Spam FC for short. We are a men’s league team and a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping students that have been positively impacted by soccer pay for college. 

Spam FC was a youth team originated in St. Louis Park that was revived and rebranded to become one of the most respected MASL sides in the history of the league since 2011. In addition to expressing our passion on the field, we have developed a platform called Spam FC Scholarship Foundation to give back to the Minnesota soccer community. Since 2014, we have donated nearly $30,000 to help 33 male and female students pay for books, tuition and other college-related expenses. 

Last weekend, we hosted our 3rd annual Spam FC Scholarship Dinner at the St. Louis Park Rec Center. The event was incredible - definitely one our best, ever! 

The night was filled with laughter, stories and lots incredible Khmer and Croatian food. Some of the items on the menu were egg rolls, spring rolls, curry, cabbage rolls and fried rice. We also had beer, wine and whiskey to wash the delicious meal down as well. 

In 2014, our first year, we raised $2,500. In January, the first month of 2019, we raised nearly $20,000. It was an incredible night and we are so appreciative of the generous donors that gave between $50 to $5,000. 

Our mission has always been to build a community to help students that have been positively impacted by soccer achieve their higher educational dreams. Last Saturday was another step closer. 

As our community continues to grow, we invite you to be a part of it. Because what we do at Spam FC goes beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch. We are providing young people financial and moral support and a platform to share how soccer has impacted their life in a positive way. We are empowering them to reflect and analyze the game from a different lens in hopes that they will be inspired to apply the lessons they’ve learned about the immense power of inclusion, community and failures to their daily life. 

At this moment, we are finding our groove and creating some momentum. But I feel like we’re just getting started. As a grassroots organization, we are always looking for support, media coverage and partnership. 

So, again, I invite any of you that stumble upon this piece to be join us. The soccer community in Minnesota is pretty diverse, which I absolutely love - we want to include everybody. If I didn’t end this piece with an analogy, then it’s just not me. 

If life was a soccer game, walls would be momentary fixes, not long-term solutions. As a self-acclaimed Spam FC captain for many years, I’ve always been optimistic and strategic about finding alternative ways to protect my team from conceding, so we can improve and grow. To do so, I would encourage my team not commit desperate fouls in our defensive thirds during meaningful moments. I don't like setting up walls, I don't like giving dangerous free kicks; if we're serious about protecting ourselves against our opponents, we have to find other solutions. I mean, just check out what Messi, Piro and Beckham did to wall. There are walls around them.

- Van Hong

The Democratic Approach to Kit Design

One of the side benefits of the massive expansion of lower league soccer leagues is the amazing number of beautiful designs. We’ve tried to give exposure to these designs in our weekly Uni-Formity column. One of the clubs we’ve highlighted is Dynamo FC. If you haven’t read that article, you should; it’s a great piece of writing.

Dynamo FC plays its matches in the MASL (Minnesota Amatuer Soccer League) and has had back to back seasons of promotion, from the fourth division up to its current division, the second division. While the kits have little to do with the great play on the field, it hasn’t hurt the club’s appeal to fans and interest on social media. After the success of its last season, the team decided to shake things up with a kit redesign. We spoke with Logan Lommel, a player and one of the club organizers, about the process on the kit design and redesign.

What emerged quickly from the conversation is that the aesthetic approach, from the very basic aspects, has all been democratically approved by the team. Even the team colors. “No other team in the area in any sport had this combination, and it fits the electric scheme. Plus, the players and coaches loved the combination when we voted.” That approach, taking a vote, is the highlight of this winter kit redesign as well, but more on that a little later.

For a club so young, a fresh kit might seem unnecessary, but Lommel doesn’t see it that way.  “It’s a great way to get our club out there. People are always excited to see new uniforms, and we are always looking to outdo ourselves.” And the excitement is showing online with each new announcement about the kits; fans are liking and retweeting the posts. But the social media campaign is the final step in a process that had begun much earlier.

“We wanted to make a kit with a base color of white for our home kit because last season we ended up wearing our whites the most. Players and managers came up with all sorts of different ideas, and then Eduardo [Eduardo Silva, club manager] sent them to Stimulus. Stimulus came back with eight of our designs nicely polished, and then as a group we narrowed that down to five. Once we had the five, players at tryouts along with other Dynamo players voted on their favorites. We took the top three to our social media on Instagram and Twitter. Now it is in the hands of the community to choose what they want our home kit to be.”

And that’s where this process is at the moment and it will remain until Christmas Eve. The club is asking for fans to vote the final choice of the kit. So far, the voting has been energetic. “#2 seems to be the most controversial one…#3 seems to be the most popular, but many have talked about #1. It will all come down to the 24th when we look back, and count the votes.”

Just a note, if you want to vote, Logan pointed out that some fans have voted on Twitter but forgot to RT the original post. So here’s the link to the original post. You need to RT for your vote to count. We’re eagerly awaiting the results (but you should vote for #3).