on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Soccer Dreams

Coaches hope a new French connection will increase the joie de foot on both sides of the pond

(Aug. 6, 2009)  All last Wednesday, on a bright green field behind Pacific Union School, bunches of kids — mostly girls — between the ages of 11 and 14 manipulated soccer balls with a French accent.

“We must jungle,” they joked, mimicking their French coaches affectionately, when it was time to practice juggling the ball — keeping it in the air with toe, thigh, knee, head, ankle, heel.

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But it wasn’t just linguistics — their entire bodies were learning French. The kids were taking part in an inaugural cross-pollination of soccer skills and philosophies in which they received intensive skills training from professional French soccer coaches, and the French soccer coaches gained insight into the robust enthusiasm with which Americans apparently approach the sport.

How did this come about? How did 25 kids from Humboldt County end up getting to spend an entire week incessantly practicing and polishing their Maradonas, their Cruyffs, their Zidanes and other famous-soccer-player-named moves with these high-level French professionals? With Yves Lledo and Cedric Schweitzer — coaches for the French pro team Racing Club de Strasbourg and its associated youth programs, which has produced World Cup stars as well as the famous coach of the English professional football club The Arsenal, Arsène Wenger? With — even more exciting for the girls — Sandrine Ringler, a coach for France’s U-20 (under 20) women’s national team, an official with the women’s French Football Federation, and who once played against American soccer great Mia Hamm?

And what’s this talk of some of these kids going to Strasbourg, on the border of France and Germany, and Europe’s capital, next year?

Blame it on Piakai. Last year, Yves Lledo was in America to set up a California-based version of his Racing Club de Strasbourg-associated youth soccer camp, Rêve de Foot, at the French American International School of San Francisco in Marin County. The principal of the school, whose son was on the state boys’ under-13 national team, told Lledo he should check out one of his son’s teammates, Piakai Henkel of Arcata.

Lledo watched the boy train, and was impressed. “Technically, he is well-educated,” Lledo said last Wednesday as he watched the clinic participants practice behind Pacific Union School. “However, he has much work to do on the mental game and becoming physically stronger.”

As luck would have it, Piakai could speak conversational French; his mother is fluent. Lledo invited him to come train in Strasbourg in the youth sport education program attached to the pro team Racing Club de Strasbourg. There, he would study not only soccer, but sports nutrition and medicine and other related topics as well as regular academic subjects.

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