Just published: We All Wore Blue - the FC Shoreline International youth soccer team

Players gathered for their 10 year reunion and to
celebration the publication of the story of their team
Coach / author Emerson Robbins at right

"We All Wore Blue" is the true story of a Shoreline youth soccer team comprised of players from as many as seventeen different countries, every major race and religion and how the team came together and embraced one another and celebrated their differences on their journey to winning two Washington State Championships in 2006 through 2010.

The team was located in Shoreline and was actually named FC Shoreline International.

Their coach, Emerson Robbins, has written a book about the team, which can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and most of the prominent Northwest area bookstores.

It's an inspirational story for our country and the world, especially important for today's turbulent times.

Centerpieces and decorations included flags from the
17 home countries of the players

The players, now in their late 20s, reunited recently at the Innis Arden Clubhouse in Shoreline to celebrate the book launch and their ten year anniversary.

A successful screenwriter is working on developing the story into a series aimed at Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or one of the other networks.

Here is Robbins' account of their beginnings

I was born in Seattle, but I grew up in the Los Angeles area. My family moved here (Shoreline) in 1998 and lived there until 2010, when we moved to Whidbey Island, where my wife and I currently live.

 

I have coached youth soccer for over 35 years. After coaching for about twenty years, when we moved up here I began coaching my youngest son's team. It was the typical youth soccer team you'd find in most parts of the country, except it may have been the worst team I'd ever seen.

The coaches were just Dads who didn't really know too much about soccer, but were trying to do the right thing by their kids and the team. They had not won a single game during the first three years of the team's existence. 

Once I took over, the team started winning, but also changing. 

It's a long story, but somehow, without any real intention, the team attracted many immigrant kids who wanted to play. One day, there was a tall African boy watching our team practice and seeing him jealously watching, I invited him to join our practice. It turned out he was from Ethiopia and he and his family had just come from a refugee camp in Kenya just weeks prior to coming to WA State. 

They were living in subsidized apts in Shoreline, just a block or two from the park we practiced at. He loved playing on our team and soon began sharing his joy with other immigrant kids in his ESL class at Einstein Middle School. 

Within a year or two, other immigrant boys joined our team and before long, there were more kids from different countries, races and religions than there were white suburban kids.

The team continued winning and improving.

We ended up all bonding, the players and the families and enjoyed incredible international feasts, with food from as many as 16 different countries. The parents could not afford to pay the high costs of the youth soccer fees, so I helped pay their way. 

However, the families could cook, so we all enjoyed these amazing get togethers. 

This became our FC Shoreline International team, which ended up winning our respective league titles every year as well as two Washington State Championships. 

From the worst youth team I'd seen years earlier, we transformed into one of the top youth soccer teams in the State.

However, the real story was how we all became close and the players and families all celebrated our differences. 

People from dramatically different economic circumstances, different races, religions, etc. 

And no one on the team cared about such superficial nonsense. 

We just had fun together, sharing what we had in common, the love of soccer and the incredible food from all these assorted cultures and countries. 

I knew our story might be of interest to many, as whenever we would play an away game, people would look at our motley group and wonder where we were from and how we happened to come together. 

However, it wasn't until our current President started speaking so disparagingly and cruelly about immigrants, than I was motivated to have our story told and began writing the book, "We All Wore Blue."