Soccer as salvation: How La Liga Del Sol is empowering Latino youth in Raleigh

There’s dirt under Ramón Gallardo Sr.’s fingernails. His palms are calloused. And yet he carefully holds his cell phone to display a photo of his latest masterpiece — a floor he painted that swirls like a marbled galaxy. There’s a softness in his touch and pride in his smile.

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1970, Gallardo moved to Los Angeles with his family at age 10. In 1995, he made his way to North Carolina, where he established his painting business, Ramon & Company, and raised his family.

Gallardo has been up since 6 a.m. on this hot August day. He’ll work “until it gets dark.”

As he walks through WRAL Soccer Park in Raleigh, he points out the many murals and decals scattered across the complex. Inside the clubhouse, designs of soccer players — one making a diving save, another attempting a bicycle kick — line the white-bricked walls. Years ago, Gallardo began painting here as a way to pay off his son’s club soccer fees for Capital Area Soccer League (now known as North Carolina FC Youth).

Soon, Gallardo Sr.’s creativity would open the doors for countless other players like his son.

“One day I’m painting and they ask me, ‘Hey Ramón, do you think you could put a team together so a Latino team could play here?’” he said, with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Yeah, we can do that. Absolutely.’”

At the first tryout in 2011, 150 kids showed up. And that was just the beginning.

What began as a modest vision — to give Latino children a place to play organized soccer without sky-high club fees — has blossomed into something extraordinary. La Liga Del Sol, or “The League of the Sun,” now serves more than 800 girls and boys across five age groups and 40 teams. The grassroots youth league based in Raleigh offers not just soccer, but hope, kinship and opportunity to hundreds of families in the Triangle.

Gallardo Sr. helped build this league from the ground up. He faced both financial barriers and the challenges of navigating a system that wasn’t designed for families like his. But thanks to his persistence, and the support of the community, Gallardo Sr. carved out a space where working-class kids can play the sport they love — no strings attached.

From athletes who’ve gone on to play in college, to those who simply come for the joy of the game, La Liga Del Sol has become vital to the fabric of the community.

“This is like a different form of church,” La Liga Del Sol coach Daniel Austria said. “You’re coming together with a community with a common goal with the youth… I’m glad I have this with my boys.”

‘Money should not be the reason why they can’t’

Hector Oropeza, like many players, got his start playing in a “Hispanic league.”

Also known as “Latino league,” these community-based soccer groups are an important component of many Spanish-speaking Americans’ experience with the sport.

Games take place across public parks and are bustling with high-energy play, camaraderie between family and friends — and of course, plenty of trash talk.

Here, soccer is competitive and violent. Slide-tackling, a dangerous move that can draw a yellow or red card in most levels of soccer, is routine. Young players toughen up quickly. For many athletes like Oropeza, this version of soccer is all they know.

“I knew I was good, because I was one of the best players in that Hispanic league,” Oropeza said. “I was like, I need to go somewhere else.”

But club soccer seemed out of reach for Oropeza, who was raised by a single mom.

“She didn’t make the best amount of money, so she couldn’t pay for the club soccer, which was expensive,” Oropeza said. “We’re talking about $3,000.”

Oropeza isn’t alone.

Youth sports have become a multi-billion dollar industry. That growth is unlikely to slow anytime soon, especially given the influx of private equity into this sector.

Project Play’s analysis reveals that families spend an average of $1,118 per year on youth soccer. For context, NCFC Youth’s lowest competitive level “Challenge” can charge upwards of $800 for fees and kits. And that’s not including costs of travel, hotels and food.

Paul Cuadros, an award-winning author and high school soccer coach, has dedicated more than 20 years to covering race, poverty and Latino communities in the U.S. His book, “A Home on the Field,” highlights the impact of Latino immigration through soccer.

Cuadros said the privatization of youth soccer, as well as the decline in funding for parks and recreation departments, has “created a divide.” He said cost is the biggest barrier to club soccer for Latino families, who often find themselves priced out.

“We have parks and municipalities who have essentially decided that they’re not going to do that kind of programming,” he said. “They will give that programming over to private leagues… those leagues will then charge whatever they want to charge.”

“So all these things end up being money to play a sport that doesn’t really cost a lot of money to play,” Cuadros added. “So for Latino families, some of them — they want their kids to play at higher levels — but they’re confused as to why it costs so much money.”

La Liga Del Sol, on the other hand, costs approximately $100 for a year. That includes two seasons (there are eight game weekends each fall and spring season) and a jersey.

Oropeza discovered La Liga Del Sol in a radio announcement. He was riding around town with his uncle when he heard the news: Del Sol was hosting tryouts at Capital Area Soccer League.

This was Oropeza’s chance.

“I remember telling my uncle, ‘Please drop me off at CASL,’” Oropeza said. “I was like, ‘Please drop me off, I’ll find a ride home.’ And I knew that once I got to the field, I knew I was going to make it, at the time.”

Gallardo Sr. selected Oropeza, who was 11 or 12, from that initial tryout and guided him in his soccer journey, helping him reach the elite club level. Financial assistance played a crucial role in Oropeza’s ability to continue playing as he transitioned from Del Sol.

NCFC Youth chief marketing & development officer Katharine Eberhardt said the organization’s financial aid program is “fairly robust.” NCFC Youth expects to distribute more than $500,000 in aid to qualifying players and families this year.

For Oropeza, La Liga Del Sol’s support showed him he could belong in organized soccer.

“It has become for everybody… I think it’s doing great,” Oropeza said. “It’s going in a great direction. I don’t know how far they’re going to take it but it’s grown a lot.”

‘Hungry to play’

The vision for La Liga Del Sol started with Gallardo’s son, Ramon Gallardo Jr. By the time he was 10, his talent was undeniable. He wasn’t just kicking the ball around; he was pulling off rainbow flicks and weaving through defenders with ease.

“I couldn’t coach his level anymore and I needed to find help for him,” Gallardo Sr. said. “So I did.”

In the early 2000s, Gallardo Jr. enrolled in club soccer. It wasn’t long before the Gallardos were traveling the country, competing in tournaments in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.

But there was something missing from every field they visited.

“We were probably the only Latinos there,” Gallardo Sr. said.

Gallardo Sr. could afford to keep Gallardo Jr. in these programs, but it wasn’t easy. The price tag for his travel soccer ran between $6,000 and $7,000 a year.

By the time Gallardo Jr. reached age 13, the payments became too much.

“That was an accelerator to starting Del Sol,” Gallardo Jr. said. “I mean, he started a team for me… he gave me that environment where I wasn’t bored at home and maybe making bad friendships.”

Gallardo Sr. began by gathering his son and six other kids — recruiting through family friends and word of mouth — on whatever fields he could find.

The early training sessions took place at John Chavis Memorial Park in Raleigh. The dimly-lit field, with buzzing light poles and sporadic outages, was the team’s makeshift home. Employees occasionally came out and told them to leave. The kids would wait for the staff to turn their backs, and then run back on the field to continue training.

“I wouldn’t charge them,” he said. “I mean, to me, the thing was to get the kids on the field so they’d be out of the streets and do something for them.”

In the early days, getting the word out was the hardest part. Through a connection at Qué Pasa, a local Spanish newspaper, Gallardo Sr. began to reach more players. The group grew.

Gallardo Sr. found a permanent spot in the Cardinal Gibbons High School softball outfield, where he cut the grass in exchange for field access.

“Playing on that field, that’s what made it boom right there,” Gallardo Sr. said. “We had a place where we were staying and trained. They knew, every Tuesday and Thursday, we would train [there].”

With time, Gallardo Sr. had 100 players on the field in a single session, using parents as “involuntary coaches” to help run different drills. He organized scrimmages against club teams, packing his players into an old 16-passenger van for trips across the state.

“We went all the way to Wilmington with no AC,” Gallardo Sr. recalled. “And we were as happy as could be.”

After a few years, he had recruited enough players to make a select team. This was no longer just a way to keep kids busy; this group was seriously talented.

During the 2008-09 season, a group of Gallardo Sr.’s 16-year-olds approached the coach, begging him to be registered for an under-20 tournament hosted by the Mexican Consulate.

Though hesitant about a matchup with seasoned players, Gallardo Sr. eventually agreed, warning the boys not to get their hopes up.

Gallardo’s squad won the tournament.

“We just blew those guys out of the water,” Gallardo Sr. said. “We’d been training for so long that they were so hungry to play, and when we got there, it was like, boom.”

‘How can we bring the game closer?’

Gallardo Jr. went off to college in 2009, playing soccer at the University of Mount Olive. Meanwhile, his father was still looking for opportunities to expand the operation, reaching out to established club programs for potential partnerships.

His one rule? No fees.

Club after club turned him away, saying their price was non-negotiable.

“It was tough,” Gallardo Sr. recalled.

But as Gallardo Sr.’s relationship with CASL grew, an opportunity opened up in 2011.

During the first tryouts organized in conjunction with CASL, 150 kids showed up — an overwhelming number considering they only expected to form one team.

From there, the program kept growing, fueled by the community’s enthusiasm and the need for an inclusive soccer environment.

The vision behind La Liga Del Sol aligned perfectly with NCFC Youth’s mission, said Eberhardt.

“It’s our commitment always to make sure soccer is accessible to everyone in our community,” Eberhardt said.

This year, NCFC Youth asked families to designate their ethnicity for the first time. Eberhardt said 7.5% of the club’s players identified as Hispanic or Latino (excluding those who identified as multiracial).

In Wake County, 11.35% of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino according to 2020 Census data, indicating that La Liga Del Sol and NCFC Youth have room for improvement.

“We know we’re missing some folks,” Eberhardt said. “How can we bring the game closer? A couple ways we can do that are through awareness of the program and letting people know that it’s there and then field access — which is always the toughest part.”

Eberhardt said NCFC Youth is in the process of developing a free-play soccer field in southeast Raleigh — an area some consider a field desert.

As Del Sol looks to grow, word-of-mouth is its biggest driver. Players like Taylor Pilkington, who first joined when Del Sol was just one team, are seeing their own children now reap the benefits of the league.

His son, Rory, plays for the NCFC Youth Pre-Academy team, the top squad for the “2014s” age group.

For kids like Rory, Del Sol offers a fun break from the intensity of club soccer.

“There’s lots of diversity in the league,” Taylor Pilkington said. “Lots of different playing experiences. Lots of different backgrounds… it’s something we look forward to as just a chance for him to express himself as a player and have a good time.”

Taylor Pilkington said the club environment produces a “certain type of soccer player,” whereas La Liga Del Sol helps “bring out different attributes that are important.”

For Gallardo Sr., that means playing with passion. Forget the strategies, tactics and discipline that higher-level club preaches. Through Del Sol, he encourages players to put their soul into the game.

“They (the coaches) just tell you, ‘Play,’” Gallardo Sr. said. “So they have the freedom to do things — do rainbows, do megs, whatever — we love that kind of stuff. So we let them do it.”

‘They love playing together’

On any given Sunday at WRAL Soccer Park, Mexican flags flutter in the parking lot. Parents urge their young futbolistas from the sidelines.

“¡Más intenso! ¡Más rápido!” they yell. “More intense! Faster!”

Benito López pushes a paleta cart in the distance, its wheels squeaking across the pristine turf. Soon, scores of children will make their way over to López. The popsicles are a big hit, especially the coconut flavor.

López works as a cook during the week, but on the weekends he’s here. López has sold traditional Mexican popsicles at La Liga Del Sol events for five years. He loves watching the games, and has made many friends here.

For López, and so many others, La Liga Del Sol has meant more than a soccer league – it’s a symbol of belonging and pride for the local Latino community.

Claudia Rodriguez and her family have been making the 50-minute drive from Kenly, in Johnston County, for years. For her kids, the community aspect of Del Sol makes the travel worthwhile.

“They love playing together,” Rodriguez said. “They’ve become kind of like a family playing together.”

Many players, parents and coaches cite Del Sol’s diversity — in background, culture and playing style — as one of its strengths.

Max, Daniel Austria’s son and a player on U14 Oro, described the club as particularly “awesome” for children who have recently moved to the U.S.

“I have a bunch of friends that just recently moved here [to the U.S.],” he said, “and they’re just looking to find friends and find a team and they joined Del Sol, and I heard a lot of them really like it. I think it’s great because you find a lot of other people with the same problems. It’s a great way to find friends… and keep playing the sport you love.”

Former players like Willy Ramirez and Oscar Vega know this firsthand.

When Ramirez immigrated to North Carolina in 2010, he knew virtually no English. The seventh-grader from El Salvador tried out with Del Sol and quickly made the jump to an under-14 team with CASL.

Ramirez said he shed his shyness and his English got better. Ramirez’s on-field skills improved, too, and he went on to play at N.C. State.

Ramirez is now regularly invited to speak to Del Sol, where he’s an example to young players of who they can one day be.

“They will look up to us and I think that’s really important,” Ramirez said. “They’ve got some motivation and they’re thinking ‘I want to get to that level.’’”

When Vega emigrated from Honduras as a teenager, he made the journey alone. Vega said he didn’t attend high school and instead found work sanding houses. Vega lived alone in an apartment, where his next-door neighbor invited him to play soccer in “La Liga Maya,” a local Hispanic league.

Then Vega found Del Sol.

“I didn’t have a family [here],” Vega said. “Nobody to say, ‘Hey, do this, do this’... so when I started playing soccer here with La Liga, my focus was like, ’Oh, I got to train, I got to play.’”

In the early 2000s, Vega was one of the seven kids who formed Gallardo Sr.’s first team. There was no “Liga” then. Just “Del Sol.”

Gallardo Sr. was strict. The team was organized from its defense, to the midfield and all the way to the attack. Del Sol, in a similar way, gave structure to Vega’s life. He wasn’t pulled to wash his sorrows in alcohol like many of his peers.

He found his escape on the field.

“I think soccer,” Vega said, “was one of the things that helped me out of the street.”

‘It brought opportunities for everybody’

Before freshmen Roberto Rayo and Rafael Quevedo-Antunez played together at William Peace University, they were teammates in La Liga Del Sol. Both are proud first-generation college students and members of the men’s soccer team at WPU.

Both credit Del Sol as a pivotal part of their soccer journeys.

Rayo and Quevedo-Antunez embody the two principal paths La Liga Del Sol offers its players. For Rayo, the league was an outlet — a place to enjoy the game, develop skills and play with passion. For Quevedo-Antunez, it was a stepping stone to higher levels of competition.

Thanks to Del Sol, Quevedo-Antunez had the chance to showcase his talent in front of coaches from NCFC Youth, who frequently scout the league’s weekend games.

“It brought opportunities for everybody,” Quevedo-Antunez said. “If you performed.”

Quevedo-Antunez went on to play for Elite Clubs National League, a major recruiting pathway for college programs.

“If I didn’t start with that Del Sol team, I don’t think I would’ve played at a higher club level,” he said. “I don’t think I would’ve played club at all.”

The same can be said of Oropeza. Now in his fourth year as a coach with Del Sol, Oropeza is hoping to open the door for more players like him.

As Del Sol has expanded, so have Oropeza’s teams. He now coaches three: 2010 Oro FC, 2012 Oro FC and 2014 Oro FC.

On a typical Sunday, you can find Oropeza’s U14 squad preparing diligently for its games, with players striking shots and passing balls back and forth as they wait their turn to play.

Coach Austria surveys the Oro roster — it’s normal for players to miss games, or roll in a bit late from church — and scrawls notes and potential formations on a whiteboard.

Austria takes a break from his scheming to assist one of his players with his shot. The angling of his foot isn’t quite right.

“Do it with your left!” Austria instructs.

“Ohhhh,” the player groans. “My left is horrible!”

“How do we make it better?” Austria responds.

“Practice,” the player says, without missing a beat. He resumes the pregame drill, this time focusing on his non-dominant foot.

Through his coaching, Austria emphasizes the importance of discipline through simple but impactful routines. If his players don’t have respect, they’ll learn “real quick.”

“It’s culture that is not going to change,” Austria said. “It’s important to have that culture because the kids are disciplined. If they don’t know they need it, they need it.”

His team must leave the fields cleaner than they found them. Empty water bottles are always picked up. All balls and pennies must be accounted for at the end of each practice. Austria’s players shake adults’ hands, look them in the eyes. Chin up. Shoulders proud. Yes sir. No sir.

“We’re not here to just win games,” Austria said. “We’re here to make sure your young man or woman is going to be successful in life.”

In this way, La Liga Del Sol has continued to fulfill Gallardo Sr.’s original vow.

Though Gallardo Jr. has taken over the day-to-day operations, his father can still be spotted most weekends at WRAL Soccer Park.

His calloused hands — once used to paint murals here — grip the edges of his Adidas tracksuit as Gallardo Sr. walks amongst the various fields. He observes the games intently, making small talk with coaches and families.

There’s a softness in his touch as he holds his clipboard, a quiet pride in his gaze. Among the crowd of parents, he spots familiar faces— like Pilkington and Vega — who now bring their own children to the fields each weekend.

“Sometimes I lose track of them,” Gallardo Sr. said, “and then I see them again.”

With hundreds of lives touched, it’s understandable he can’t keep up with everyone. Yet, it’s clear that his “Del Sol boys” will never forget the impact Gallardo Sr. has had on them.

“He did change my life, you know?” Ramirez said. “Del Sol changed my life, gave me a better opportunity.

It just shows you the way.”