Today is the first time Ariana Sanchez, or Ary, has played soccer on a turf field and stadium that cost over $1 million.
“It’s going great!” Sanchez, 15, says. “Well, we’re losing by a little bit, but we’re having fun.”
Sanchez and about 50 other girls are at Carroll College in Waukesha, about 20 miles from Milwaukee, where these girls are from. They’re here for a one-day youth skills camp hosted by Legacy Sports.
But the girls from Milwaukee are coming from a different place: Brillantes. It's a soccer community on the south side, which serves primarily young Latinas. And all of this — the field, the coaching, the slick jerseys the girls are wearing — it was all free.
“Each kid [for an experience like this] is probably…$150 to $250 just for the day,” says Brillantes co-founder KB Pallo. “This kind of experience [we’re bringing it] at no cost. Parents don't have to worry about anything…just come enjoy.”
Ary’s mom, Carolina Lomeli, is standing off to the side during one of the drills. She’s smiling watching her daughters Ary and Allison, 5.
“The feelings are just incredible,” Lomeli says. “I can't believe they're playing the sport that I love, but just seeing them out there I’m starting to tear up…that's what I love.”
Getting in the game
Brillantes has only been around for 18 months, but its impact is huge — maybe even life-changing for some of the girls. While there are other soccer programs around Milwaukee, even a few in the central city, Brillantes serves girls exclusively — girls like Ary Sanchez, who want to play.
“She's a kid with natural talent, and so a lot of her transformation with us has actually not been about her soccer skills, per se,” says Pallo. “For her, I feel like it's a change of mindset, a change of confidence and a change in self-esteem.”
Pallo and Brillantes say they tailor experiences for each kid, which has helped someone like Ary bloom from maybe a little awkward, to less so.
“She's one of my most obnoxious kids…in a good way,” Pallo says laughing. “She's just more, like, owning her space and owning the team that she's on every time I'm around her.”
For a girl, owning your space isn’t easy in youth soccer. They might get coached differently than boys. They might not get passed the ball playing co-ed, so they might not develop as players. And, here, with Brillantes, everything is no-cost or low-cost, which might fight against the biggest barrier with youth sports.
“It's really a pay-to-play model, especially in a sport like soccer that hasn't been around super long in the United States,” Pallo says. “If you have money and resources, transportation, etc, you can play and have anything open to you. But the kids that don't have that can't access soccer in that way.”
Brillantes kids haven’t had that access. And it’s not just youth sports working against young Latinas.
“To me, they are the most marginalized athletes that we have in this country,” says Pallo. “When we're talking about language barriers, socioeconomic status — and then also both internal and external culture against them.”
For instance, if you’re a girl growing up in a Latino household, you might not be encouraged to play youth sports like your brothers. When Pallo started coaching girls' soccer in a different league, they saw that gap in development up-close when playing all-white teams from around Milwaukee’s suburbs.
“The girls on the other side of the field compared to my girls were like machines already,” says Pallo. “And I'm like, 'how are you even this good at eight, nine years old?'...It pisses me off that it was still happening to girls, you know?”
Pallo and her co-founder Brenda Gonzalez talked about how they could make a difference in closing this opportunity gap that exists for girls, before they even get on the field.
Enter, Brillantes.
Soccer for the community
KB Pallo grew up with an older sister and four brothers. Being stuck in the middle of their siblings, the big question was: can you hang in sports? Since it was a basketball family, naturally it was KB’s first love.
“I was in the backyard playing with the neighbor boys all day, every day, and then by myself. I was putting in a couple hours a day, like at five years old,” Pallo says. “But I never was put into sports because at that time my mom didn't realize that, like, your daughters could be athletes.”
A few years later, they found soccer and quickly learned all about that opportunity gap.
There was this one weekend, Pallo was in middle school, and at one of their soccer games. On the field right next to them, there’s this team playing in super cool jerseys and gear, they were getting coached hard, and they were winning. It was club soccer.
Today, around Milwaukee, youth club soccer — teams that travel, have paid coaching, and sweet gear — can range anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars per kid. With Brillantes, Pallo and Gonzalez made it a point that money wouldn’t be a barrier for kids improving.
“There's a group of four high school girls that I met last summer, and I saw some talent in them and some grit,” says Pallo. “And after talking to them, I realized that they had never been on a club team before. And I was like, how are you 17 years old and this decent at soccer and like, you've never played on an organized club team before?”
Turns out, the kids dreamed of playing club. But two of them were going to be seniors.
“So this was actually, like, the last year of their life that they would be able to play youth club soccer. And so I was like, no, we got to get you guys into something. After these girls did their first tournament with their club team…they were texting me, like, 'Thank you so much for this opportunity. I never thought I could be a player at this level. I never thought I'd have an experience like this.'”
Soccer’s cross-border, longstanding opportunity gap
Carolina Lomeli sees a lot of similarities with KB Pallo’s story. She also grew up loving the game. Even if the game didn’t love her back.
“I grew up on a farm back in Mexico, in Jalisco, and…there's the soccer field right in front of that house, my parents' house,” says Lomeli. “So it was not very hard for me to like [soccer]. Even though back then, in the early 90s, seeing a girl on the soccer field was not normal. The name calling…it was horrible. We have never seen a girl play in the entire county. What is she doing? But that didn't stop me.”
Now as a mom, she didn’t want to push Ary to play. But she did want to make sure she had an opportunity to if she wanted.
“Soccer, it never really caught my eye,” says Sanchez. “I knew my mom played, but it wasn't like, 'Oh my God, like, I really want to go play.' No, it was never that.”
Right after COVID lockdown, Carolina pushed Ary to get out of the house and move her body. And soccer still meant the world to Carolina.
“So I started playing rec soccer and it was a team with all boys and with like two girls, which is where I met my best friend,” Sanchez says. “And when you play with boys, sometimes they won't pass you the ball, you won't get as much time — it's like you're just there, and it just wasn't good.”
But Carolina saw something in her daughter. She signed her up for club ball, then got her on Oak Creek’s high school team. But where things changed for Ary, and her relationship to the game, was when she joined Brillantes.
Over the past year, Ary has gone to ID camps, which gets young players in front of coaches and scouts. She visited a D1 college and talked with the women on the team. And later this month, a group of Brillantes girls are playing in a big soccer tournament in Chicago.
“All these opportunities that came to us, they really are amazing,” says Sanchez. “Because I don't think if I had joined Brillantes, I don't think I would have gotten these opportunities for free, or gotten to go to all these other places.”
Passing on the game
Ball is life for mother and daughter — and that’s not an overstatement. One way it comes out is a lot of tough coaching from mom. At the camp, on that million-dollar field, Carolina was constantly bringing up Ary’s play: what she was doing right, wrong and needs to keep improving. And after every game, Carolina will let Ary know how she did.
“[I’ll say] something like, 'Why didn't you look at me when I told you to keep running?'” Lomeli says. “'Why are you giving up so fast? Why? You're not fighting for every ball? Why have you not implemented the guidance I provided to you last game?'”
Lomeli asks her daughter how the advice lands. She’s always wanted to know, but never asked.
“Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm not good enough, maybe that I should have done something better,” says Sanchez quietly. “I feel like everything that I do, I take it negatively. I can never think on the positive side. And when coaches tell me things are like, 'Oh, you're good, you're talented.' I'm like, 'are they just saying this because they feel bad?'”
Growing up playing youth sports, you might find dads that coach their boys hard. It’s not uncommon to see boys break down on the field after hearing from their dad. And there are many moments of dads running onto fields or courts mid-game.
What’s clear is it means something that a mom can really coach her daughter. It says something about that opportunity gap and how it might be slowly closing.
“My mom will talk her head off about what I did wrong, what I did right, all the way home on the car ride,” Sanchez says. “And it's funny because everyone's like, 'really, like, your mom?' And I'm like, 'yeah, my mom.' She's the one who played soccer. She's in love with it. So she's going to say what I did wrong, what I did right, [and] she's not going to lie to my face and say, I had a good game. She's going to…give me that constructive feedback.”
Another part of Brillantes, and a big part of this community, was to create an inclusive space for Latinas and Latino families.
Ary Sanchez grew up in a lot of majority white settings, playing on majority-white teams. Brillantes has given her soccer, sure, but also connection to her culture.
“When I joined, I was happy that it was with people that I could probably bond with a little more, a little easier, people that I can relate to,” Sanchez says. “With the things that go on in the world, sometimes you may hear a little racism and it gets all up in your head. So being in a space with girls that really are like you, it's amazing because you all bond and know how the world is right now. It really is beautiful to see all these girls together.”
“We should all be feeling safe playing the sport we love. But I know there's a lot of families out there that they're not. And that makes me really sad,” says Lomeli.
A full-circle moment on a turf field
Back at the skills camp at Carroll College, Carolina Lomeli is talking with one of Legacy’s coaches and co-founders, Derrick Marie. Marie and Legacy are the ones hosting this event. She wants to know what he sees in Ary’s game.
“The girls that are high-level, they want more. They demand more,” says Marie. “I'm coaching them the same way I coach my guys, because they can handle it. And you know what? Women listen better.”
Marie has coached college, club and high school soccer for over 10 years. And while all this, a one-day skills camp for 50-plus kids might bring in over $10,000, it was an easy call to give it away and support the work KB Pallo is doing with Brillantes.
“We are kids of immigrants, so without somebody at some point giving us an opportunity, we wouldn’t get to where we're at,” Marie says. “So KB was like, what's the catch? Literally we make enough money doing other things. We just want to help.”
Marie’s dad immigrated from the Island of Dominica in the West Indies, first going to New York before joining the Navy and serving in Vietnam. On his way home from serving, he asked his bunkmate where he was going. His bunkmate told him Marshfield, Wisconsin.
After the war, Marie's dad tags along. He then finds a wife, eventually settling down in Stevens Point. All of this is a full-circle moment for Derrick Marie and his partners at Legacy.
“How often do you see an all-girl, all-minority camp at a turf field and there's no ask? Never, bro. Never,” Marie says.
On the other side of the field, Ary Sanchez is in a dribbling drill. She’s smiling, playing loose and having fun. Carolina says her daughter doesn’t always look like this playing soccer. This atmosphere is different.
“With Brillantes, she's a different person,” Lomeli says. “She feels more comfortable, she feels at home. And I think what KB provides to them is that safe environment when she gets herself. And I'm like, 'you're not shy [here].' She's like, 'no, I'm not.' And I like that.”
Ary looks tired from the last drill. Breathing heavily, but still ready. She’s been one of the stars of the day. It's something she’s heard from everyone — the coaches, other players, even her mom.
“That [drill] was very tiring, I kind of fell a couple of times,” says Sanchez. “[But I’m ready for whatever's next], because that’s what I came here to do.”
