Every Wednesday night at 8 p.m., GOALS Baltimore Sports Complex in Catonsville, Maryland is a hub for soccer players to come together and play pickup soccer. The players range from ages 16 to 51. Many of the athletes were born in or have family from foreign countries.
Carlos Cubas, who was born in Peru and moved to the U.S. as an 8-year-old, is an original founder of the group and is responsible for renting out the turf. He grew up with his family having strong ties to soccer and he was always around the game.
“My dad played soccer, and I have an uncle who played in competitive leagues in Peru. I’ve always loved the sport, you know, it’s just a great team sport,” Cubas said.
Cubas explained that the group first came together to play pickup games after bringing their kids to play soccer at Towson United in Rogers Forge.
“This originally started about eight years ago, pickup soccer at Rogers Forge, and we started playing pickup on Sundays, we ended up joining an indoor league out of White Marsh,” Cubas said.
Cubas eventually found the White Marsh league to be too competitive, so he turned to GOALS Baltimore.
“This place [GOALS] had just opened up, so I decided to just rent this field and have all the guys from the White Marsh group, and a bunch of friends just come out on a consistent day of the week, consistent time, and just have fun,” Cubas said.
Another one of the original founders of the group is Manuel Del Pino, a 51-year-old father who is originally from Spain. Now in Baltimore, Del Pino gets to play pickup soccer alongside his 17-year-old son, Lucas, and he believes it keeps him in shape while strengthening his relationship with his son.
“It’s great, I love it, I would have stopped a long time ago because I’m probably going to hurt something. But because my kids started playing, now I don’t want to quit, you know? It’s like a bonding thing,” Del Pino said.
Lucas Del Pino, a current high school student attending Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, had high praise for his dad.
“It’s amazing, I mean he plays so well, even if he won’t admit it. It’s great, even when we’re not on the same team. It’s just really nice, we always come with the same shirt to try and play on the same team,” Lucas said.
The group is also in favor of new members joining and Lucas likes having new faces to play against.
“The main core group that plays, you still see a lot of the same faces, but I feel like it’s a way to meet new people. Some people will just randomly fill in one day and then suddenly they’re there every week. It’s great,” Lucas said.
One of the newest members of the group is 40-year-old Nico Werps, who joined about two years ago. Werps recalled the first time he found out about the pickup game at GOALS Baltimore.
“I play pickup on Sunday mornings with a bunch of guys over in Perry Hall, and one of them played in this league and they were short one night, so they asked me to come, and I’ve been playing here ever since,” Werps said.
Werps, who grew up in the Netherlands until the age of five, played soccer his whole life and became a coach briefly before joining the pickup group. One of the biggest reasons that he enjoys playing with the team at GOALS is that he gets to play against people of all different backgrounds that he can relate with.
“I enjoy that a lot, you know, because I kind of had that experience coming here when I was young, having that background of being from somewhere else. This group has everybody from all kinds of countries, that’s what I like about it, it’s very diverse,” Werps said.
This group of soccer players can range in age, nationality, and skill level, yet every Wednesday night they are united on one turf by the game that they love.
