During the fall of 1997, Keith Tucker, head soccer coach at Howard University assembled a group of his former players to discuss an alarming trend in college admissions’ for minority high school soccer players – their low SAT scores. Every year soccer players from across the Metropolitan area and across the nation were denied acceptance into college because of their low SAT scores. It was during these discussions that Soccer and Friends was born. Soccer was the vehicle that allowed us to become friends.Therefore, we saw it necessary to join hands as friends to make a change. 


Our plan was simple: Go into a community where the population was densely populated with immigrants and attract their children to our soccer program. Then use soccer as the tool to show them the importance of education in reaching their goals in life. We chose ...