Nearly 150 Northwestern students gathered at Floyd Long Field on Saturday morning for the “Wicked Cup,” an annual soccer tournament organized by the student group NU World Cup.
The event featured 12 teams of students with different genders, class years and experience levels, all competing for a pumpkin trophy and bragging rights.
NU World Cup plans one soccer tournament per quarter, with the fall and spring events typically having the largest turnout. This year, each player’s $10 entry fee will go towards the organization’s current charity partner, TOPSoccer, a non-profit that aims to give children with disabilities a fun and inclusive environment to play soccer.
President of NU World Cup and Weinberg senior Ferdy Salmons said a lot goes into planning a soccer tournament like the “Wicked Cup.” He described the past few weeks as “chaotic,” as he and his club members worked on getting field space, equipment and advertising the event.
“It’s always a worry that people aren’t going to come,” Salmons said. “But we are all shocked at how many people are here.”
For many students, the event provided an opportunity to engage in friendly competition in a relatively low-stakes environment.
Weinberg senior David Martinez said he’s been playing soccer since he was three years old and that the NU World Cup events are his “everything.”
“The club team (at Northwestern) is pretty competitive, and they only take a couple people each year,” Martinez said. “It’s really nice to be able to play and not necessarily have to be on that big team.”
The tournament lasted nearly four hours, with each match played seven-on-seven. The championship game pitted Will Harkin FC against Habibi FC. After an intense game, Will Harkin FC, which they named after their “absent father” — a team member who couldn’t make it to the event — took home the Wicked Cup.
Weinberg sophomore Yuri Stahl, a player on the winning team, said the team previously won second place in two other NU World Cup events, both times losing only to the Men’s Club Soccer Team.
Stahl said he saw the team’s absence at this tournament as a golden opportunity to take home the championship title.
“We locked in. We had a really good formation going, really good tactics going and we had great (defense),” said Stahl.
For Spanish and Portuguese second-year Ph.D. student Marlon Hernandez, on-campus soccer communities have given him a sense of belonging throughout his entire educational journey.
As someone who spent most of his childhood in El Salvador, one thing that has remained constant throughout his time in El Salvador and the U.S. is how soccer has served as a way of meeting and connecting with others.
Hernandez said he had been looking forward to the tournament as a way to build community with a group of friends that he had met through last year’s NU World Cup.
“Soccer is a game of emotions,” Hernandez said. “But it’s also a sense of community, a sense of belonging, because it doesn’t matter your background or anything else, we all speak the language of soccer.”
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