INTERNATIONAL SOCCER PROGRAM COLLABORATIONS( FRANCE)
Since 2014, I have hosted several French Physical Education and sport studies students in Hayward. These international internship students are enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure in Rennes, which provides the highest level of sports and Physical Education training in the nation. During their internships with the CSSJ, these French students have been able to conduct field research with Bay Area youth soccer programs. They work directly alongside American soccer coaches to gain first-hand knowledge of our youth soccer structures and approaches, then subsequently make comparisions with their own French system.
Olympic Games soccer tournaments, I hope that we can find further ways of making the Beautiful Game more accessible and impactful for local communities, including coaches, young people, and their families. I am currently working alongside committed leaders such as Robert Marcus from Positive Coaching Alliance, Nora Dooley from US Soccer’ s Soccer Forward program, Jennifer Tepper from Soccer Without Borders, as well as Dr. Leticia Price and Michael Kodama from the United Soccer Coaches’ Communities Initiative Grant from US Soccer to envision social impacts from these soccer mega-events. Our hope is to leverage these tournaments to promote grassroots participation and create a new generation of soccer players. n
These former students often go on to obtain doctorates and eventually work in university as well as community soccer programs and laboratories. Through professors Anne Schmitt, Pierrick Desfontaine, and Julien Puech, I have been able to provide guest lectures to various sport studies programs, while also mentoring student-athletes and coaches at the University of Paris-Saclay, University of Rennes, and University of Toulon. I have been welcomed into community outreach projects such as Little Miss Soccer based in the Paris region. This program was founded in 2016 by former Paris Saint Germain women’ s player Candice Prevost and Mélina Boetti, who once played with Celtic Marseille and a historic club called Juvisy. This is a social and cultural organization that advocates for the empowerment of girls and women. Other programs that I have visited include Équipe Sans Frontières Paris and Kabubu which provide training and match opportunities to support immigrant youths in underserved Parisian suburbs.
I have also had opportunities to engage with men’ s and women’ s soccer team members from the University of Toulon, in southern France. This university program, under the guidance of Dr. Desfontaine, also provides an innovative referee education pathway for coaches, with the belief that this will enhance their coaching abilities( Desfontaine and Joly, 2022). During the 2024 Summer Olympic Gameswhere my nephew Josh Atencio of Major League Soccer’ s Colorado Rapids was competing with Team USA- I was able to host Toulon student-athletes in Marseille during the competition’ s first round. Moreover, I have been involved in training and match sessions with soccer coaches from local clubs playing in the French national and regional competitive divisions. These clubs include FC Guichen near Rennes and Union Sportive Carqueiranne La Crau( USCC) in the southern Var region.
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CONCLUSION
I have worked with soccer athletes, program leaders, and coaches for the past 12 years to create more equitable sporting cultures in the Bay Area and abroad. As we look ahead to the FIFA World Cup 2026 and LA 2028 Summer
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