The first all-female youth soccer tournament festival of its kind in New York City came to Sunset Park at the beginning of February.
The Brooklyn Women’s Cup, was held at Soccerroof, a brand new venue which is on the roof of a building on 53rd St and the water.
52 teams representing 15 different soccer clubs participated. Special guests included Yael Averbuch (professional soccer player, former National Team Member), Melissa Ortiz (professional soccer freestyler and former member of the Colombia National Team) women’s coaches and soccer players from Brooklyn college programs (like Long Island University) and representatives from pro soccer teams including the NY Red Bulls.
When Averbuch and Ortiz heard about this event they wanted to be part of it right away.
Averbuch, who has played professionally in this country and internationally, has a soccer app and YouTube channel. She will soon be joining the Seattle Reign when they begin their season next month.
According to Socceroof General Manager Jonathan Lupinelli, there is no other soccer facility like this one in New York City.
The small 50’ x 80’ fields named after neighborhoods in Brooklyn including Red Hook, offer the flexibility to combine two or three fields together. The small fields at this 24-hour facility are manufactured with next generation synthetic grass materials.
Socceroof initially partnered with a soccer organization called Brooklyn City FC who helped to facilitate bringing all of the other teams to this event. The staff at Socceroof worked with local teams and reached out to the contacts that they had.
The idea for having this event initially came to the staff of Socceroof two months before the event but it was only more recently that they started really planning this all female day of soccer.
“We just wanted to bring all the female soccer players together in one place because we realized since we opened Socceroof a few months ago that women were coming and we knew that there is demand for women’s soccer,” Lupinelli said. “We really wanted to bring them together, so we decided for one afternoon to open this facility to all levels of female little girls (U8) to elite women.”
“We had support from the local community and different organizations,” Lupinelli said. “It came out pretty good.”
Girls soccer has often been under-represented in New York City, so this was a way to bring female soccer to the forefront.
All 10 of the fields had games throughout the afternoon that were referred by employees. Socceroof staff were on hand to oversee the event and trophies were given out to winning tournament teams.
Some of the teams included the Swedish youth competitive soccer organization named Gjoa, Brooklyn City FC and Downtown United.
Through Socceroof’s outreach they were able to get youth teams from Manhattan, from the Bronx, from Brooklyn, from Staten Island and from New Jersey, so they were able to get teams from the full NYC and NJ soccer community.
When large events like this take place, they are typically mixed or geared towards men.
“I think it was a perfect opportunity to say today it is for females, for women, for the girls and the males that showed up were the dads that watched their kids play,” Lupinelli added. “On the pitch it was only girls and women today. It worked well. We had a tremendous response.”
