Soccer Box 2015 Girls headed to US Youth Futsal nationals

Futsal, the fast-paced indoor variation of soccer, is largely used as a means for skill development in young soccer players — but don’t tell that to the teams headed to the Kansas City, Missouri, area this weekend for the U.S. Youth Futsal National Championships.

One of those teams competing for an age-group national title is from Wilson, the Soccer Box Futbol Club 2015 Girls will hit the court for two Girls U-9 games Saturday, July 6, at New Century Fieldhouse in New Century, Kansas. Pool play in the 5-on-5 format continues Sunday and Monday with the semifinals and finals set for Tuesday, July 9.

The Soccer Box girls are intent on adding more hardware to their skill development after going unbeaten in four games to win the USYF South Atlantic Regional championship in January in Charlotte, which is rife with high-level youth futsal teams.

“I expect us to go and perform,” said Josh Thomas, the team’s co-head coach and co-founder of Soccer Box with Randol Mendoza. “The girls’ attitude and effort have been really high. We’ve been practicing pretty much since the start of summer. I expect them to go do what they did in regionals and just give a real high-intensity effort. And with that effort, I think that we can get results when they go out there.”

The SBFC 2015 Girls rolled through the regional, one of 13 in the USYF. Each regional sends its champion and runner-up to the USYF National Championship Series, which began in 1994. The age groups start with U9 and go to U15 for boys and girls. Soccer Box’s Boys U9 team also competed in the South Atlantic Regional in January.

Thomas and Mendoza opened Soccer Box in 2019 as a development academy for young soccer players and by 2022 had installed futsal as a pillar of their program. It’s a little even more personal for both men now that their kids are playing futsal. Thomas’ daughter, Alexis, and Mendoza’s daughter, Sofia, are on the U9 girls roster, which also includes Ava CaHill, goalkeeper Ivory Maximiliano, Finley Shumate, Aubrey Walker, Ellie Ellis and Belinda Jimenez Martinez.

“Having the opportunity to come back and coach our kids and really kind of entrench some of these things into the youth side is really what got us heavily involved in futsal, and really what steers us on our camps,” said Thomas. “And really our mission going forward, just to kind of build that foundation for young players by giving them opportunities for futsal, giving them the camp opportunities to then go back and showcase skills at their club, or, you know, playing for Randol and I at WYSA. So that’s really kind of been our mindset, kind of our motivation behind it.”

Both men were involved with the first teams from Wilson to play in the USYF National Championship Series as the start-up 264 Futsal sent the U14 and U17 girls to Kansas City in 2020. That effort was started by former Barton College women’s soccer head coach Thomas Goines, who was coaching most of the U14 girls on the Wilson Youth Soccer Association ‘06 Explosion team that he also coached.

Goines moved to Nebraska for a college coaching job in 2021. He has since returned to Wilson to head player development for United Futsal, a competing futsal association with USYF under the U.S. Soccer Federation umbrella. After Goines departed, Mendoza, who has coached boys and girls soccer at Greenfield for most of the last decade, took over the ‘06 Explosion girls and led them to back-to-back U.S. Youth Soccer National Championship Series appearances while qualifying for a third nationals trip this past winter.

Since it started, Soccer Box has sent five teams to the South Atlantic Regionals but the 2015 Girls are the first to qualify for nationals, going 4-0 in Charlotte. Mendoza pointed out that he and Thomas have attained Level 2 (of 3) certification for coaching from USYF, but that finding leagues and tournaments for youth futsal teams from Wilso has been a challenge, since futsal is still growing as a competitive sport.

“We’ve taken the courses, but also we’ve gained a lot of experience in playing in leagues in Raleigh, some partnerships with some futsal clubs out of Charlotte,” Mendoza said. “We’ve gone to regional events and multiple sites. We’ve gone to Charlotte, we’ve gone to Richmond, Virginia, and we’ve gone back to Charlotte, and we kind of favor the Charlotte side, just because we have some relationships there with some of the futsal clubs in that area. Anything that we can get together to get some playing time for the girls in our program. We’ve established some partnerships with some of the futsal clubs in the state.”

While the ultimate goal of futsal is skill development and there are few competition opportunities above the youth level, it is invaluable in helping hone certain instincts in soccer players.

“Futsal is played in such a small space, being able to take players one on one, being able to defend players one on one, that when you get to the big field, it’s like, wow, I got all this space in front of me now,” Thomas said. “I’ve got a ton of opportunity to do things. When you’re so confined to small spaces in futsal, you get used to that and transitioning to the big field is just an eye-opening experience for because they know how to operate in small spaces. Now you have room to do whatever you want.”

Thomas said that the key to futsal, which is played on hard gym surfaces with a smaller, weighted ball, is “patience, foot skills and the ability to kind of see the whole court.”

“You know, futsal is a good mix of about four or five different sports,” he said. “It combines a lot of quick movements, a lot of quick passing, high-scoring games, so just kind of being involved all the time and having a high level of focus, because you can’t really take a play off. That really is the key to playing good futsal and kind of getting the opportunity to win games.”

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