Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Zimmerman.
Frank, before we jump into specific questions about the organization, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am a soccer coach. After playing youth soccer for the Soccer Club of Oceanside (Oceanside Breakers), I went on to play at Oceanside High School and later MiraCosta College. I am now fortunate enough to coach at all three organizations I played for, and serve as Head Men’s Soccer Coach at MiraCosta College, Head Boys Soccer Coach at Oceanside High School and as Director of Coaching at Oceanside Breakers. It was in my role as Director at Breakers that I met Mark Koehler and Gino Rossi.
Marc and Gino both had young daughters and I was working on a project to improve the Breakers younger girls’ competitive program. Both had soccer backgrounds and were coaching in our rec league so I approached them in successive years to work on the project as members of our paid coaching staff. Then, these two professionals took my advice and completed the United States Youth Soccer National Youth Coaching License (NYL). Focusing on soccer education from ages 4-9, the NYL applies the work of Swiss Theorist Jean Piaget and his stages of youth development. We started looking at why so many of our Oceanside kids, especially girls were quitting soccer and discovered it was a national trend, primarily due to burn out. In fact, 3.3 million kids per year were quitting youth sports because of parental pressure, coaches focused on winning, and other related issues resulting in burn out. Overexposure to competition was just not working for so many young people. So, we started looking for other ways to feed our young players desire to play the beautiful game of soccer in a less stressful, varied environment, and we discovered beach soccer.
The Beach Soccer Championships was started in 2007 with the mission to provide a fun summer kickoff in the form of a beach soccer festival to youth soccer players and adults. Every May since then we have enjoyed the growth of the event into a destination event and second largest beach festival in the world! While The Beach Soccer Championships (also known as BeSoCha) features professional and adult levels of play, including some of the biggest clubs and featuring some of the best players in the world, the goal is to provide a fun atmosphere for the youth and their families. With food, vendors, music and the Pacific Ocean all steps from the game action, BeSoCha has some impressive attendance numbers featuring over 25,000 visitors to the Oceanside Harbor beach each May!
With Gino inheriting land in Puerto Rico and Marc writing a successful book (“Lead with Purpose”) and shifting his focus to that business, I am operating BeSoCha on my own now. You see, the other major winner are the youth organizations in Oceanside including Oceanside Breakers which have received almost a quarter million dollars from BeSoCha since 2007.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not all smooth, and COVID-19 caused our first year of non-operation since 2007. Regarding what else I had challenges with. Leaving the music business to raise my kids and was forced into the only other thing I loved, which was coaching. Taking the coaching job at Oceanside HS in 1996 with the goal of making the school program I loved into a respected champion The key to success at Oceanside HS was going to need to be building Oceanside Breakers into a club who could compete with better resourced clubs from south of Oceanside while serving such a diverse and in many cases socially disadvantaged demographic. Those kids would not only end up feeding OHS but multiple high schools in the North San Diego County region.
Running events with the goal of financially supporting our club and its families. This is where The Beach Soccer Championships and later SoCal Cup would become major fundraisers for our club families.
Serving Breakers well-meant we needed more fields, which led to my contributions to the El Corazon Project and what is not So Cal Sports Complex. I spoke at six town hall meetings and several City of Oceanside Council meetings to help push this project into fruition. Oceanside Breakers now enjoys the use of one of the premier complexes’ in the United States! Newest professional challenge is taking on the position of head men’s soccer coach at MiraCosta College.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I am not sure what would be done differently, because the outcomes have been very good. I suppose when we tried to scale the event, it took a lot of time and effort away from our real goal which was providing youth an experience. What we have built in Oceanside serves San Diego County’s kids very well, and we expanded to Orange and LA Counties, which was successful. But in the end, it took us away from Oceanside during those weeks which was not my favorite decision.
Pricing:
- $699 per team to participate
Contact Info:
- Website: www.BeachSoccerUSA.org
- Phone: 760-802-1452
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/.beachsoccerusa/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=132891286295&ref=content_filter
- Twitter: https://www.mobile.twitter.com/.beachsoccerusa
Image Credit:
Renordo Bowen
Kevin Mijares
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