Hundreds of soccer enthusiasts and community members gathered at the Robert Crown Community Center on Saturday for the 10th annual Unity Soccer Festival — an event unlike most other sporting tourneys.
While typical soccer tournaments involve multiple rounds of eliminations and one winning team, the Unity Soccer Festival takes goals and victories out of the picture and instead focuses on celebrating inclusivity, diversity and friendly competition.
Over 60 teams across all age groups spread out 20 fields for a day filled with four-on-four soccer, music and food. Embracing the festival’s motto “the goals are not the goal,” the games were not scored and each team was guaranteed to play three matches each.
Founder and chair Elliott Hurtig, established the festival a decade ago after he and his friends had observed a need for community within the globally beloved sport of soccer.
“A bunch of us noticed that a lot of the soccer games that we see tend to be divided by race and gender,” Hurtig said. “So we were like, ‘Let’s have an event where we just bring everyone together in the Evanston community to celebrate the diversity and the positive spirits of what makes the community so incredible.’”
Hurtig, a former English teacher and soccer coach at Deerfield High School, organized the first ever Unity Soccer Festival that featured 14 teams at Kamen Park in 2015. After moving the event to Robert Crown three years ago, that number grew to 48 last year.
Teams were divided into three age groups from youngest to oldest: the Marley division, Chavez division and MLK division.
In addition to drawing record-high numbers, this year’s event also included a separate kid’s game as well as local health professionals to treat injured players and local vendors including Taco Nano! and Curt’s Cafe.
The festival has become a yearly tradition for many groups who have made it a goal to register a team each summer. This includes Will Schmetterer and his fellow Deerfield High School soccer alumni, who have made the trip to Evanston a handful of times over the years.
Schmetterer, whom Hurtig coached in high school, commended his former coach’s dedication to the sport, citing the growth of the festival as a reason to keep coming back.
“We love the game so much. It’s so fun coming out here and just seeing a familiar community,” Schmetterer said. “It’s super vibrant, and it’s crazy to see how many more folks and how many more numbers are out here.”
Saturday marked the first appearance for newcomers like the city of Evanston team — featuring Mayor Daniel Biss and Ald. Juan Geracaris (9th) — and the Northwestern women’s soccer team. They joined a field of returners including JaHbat FC and Campagnola restaurant, and several global teams such as teams representing the nations of Spain and Togo.
Kokou Houateme, a native of West Africa, played alongside his longtime teammates to represent Togo. Used to competing at bigger and more competitive soccer tournaments, Houateme enjoyed the unique structure of playing without scores at Saturday’s festival.
“We are just here to have fun, and we really appreciate it,” Houateme said. “It’s good to contend with other people from different places.”
Though Hurtig and the festival’s 12-person board plan to cap the field at 60 teams in the future, they hope the event’s impacts on the Evanston community will continue to flourish.
Since the festival is not for profit and teams are required to pay $50 to register, the proceeds go toward scholarships for children in need of financial assistance to play travel soccer. This year’s six scholarships went to recipients from Ethiopia, Venezuela and Jamaica.
With a profound passion for the sport and no plans of stopping, Hurtig hopes to see the Unity Soccer Festival become a staple for not only Evanston residents, but the entire soccer community as well.
“For us to just kind of take a moment and look out over all the fields and watch the people having fun and connecting — that’s the most rewarding aspect of the day,” Hurtig said. “We have a common language, and that common language is (that) we love soccer, and that brings people together.”
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