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Caitlin Silva has participated in the Boston Unity Cup tournament for the past three years but Saturday was the first time the soccer player could attend the event’s first day of celebration.
She’s a big fan of the tournament’s message and mission. The annual three-week adult soccer tournament, held on the William E. Carter Playground on Northeastern University’s Boston campus, is designed to celebrate the city’s diverse population.
Forty soccer teams representing 34 countries made their way to the campus on Saturday to kick off the tournament, proudly waving their home country’s flags in a Parade of Nations to start off the day.
Silvia is playing for Team Mexico and representing the nonprofit Soccer Without Borders.
“We celebrate the diversity of all the participants and players, and I think that’s what this tournament does so well. It’s a representation of all our different cultures,” she said.
Northeastern University has been a lead sponsor of the event since the inception of the World Cup-style event, now in its fifth year, explained Caroline Focascato, president and founder of the Soccer Unity Project, a nonprofit, and creator of the Boston Unity Cup.
“Northeastern has been an amazing partner,” Focascato said. “They’ve really leaned in as a sponsor.”
With the banging of their drums, percussionists from the international group Grooversity led the parade, playing a variety of Afro-Brazilian beats. Leading the pack was Rahul Bhargava, a Northeastern professor of journalism, art and design.
Bhargava has been a member of the traveling group for about a decade. Its mission, Bhargava said, is to bring people of different communities together through music.
“Just like the Unity Cup, we try to bring everyone together with their cultures,” he said. “I’ve been playing with this group for years, but it’s always a joy when those worlds intersect, and I get a chance to support the Northeastern community and also jam with my group.”
Joining him on Saturday was his 9-year-old son, Cosmo, who said he’s been playing drums for as long as he can remember.
“It’s always really fun to play with my dad and the whole group,” he said. “We got to play for these different people. It was so much fun. It was just a joy.”
The event featured a street festival that included food trucks, musical performances and a resource fair. There was also a youth jamboree clinic and an amputee soccer showcase.
Cesar Camacho’s 7-year-old son, Hugo, just started playing soccer about a year and a half ago.
Camacho decided to bring Hugo to the Unity Cup’s free youth clinic that was being run during the kickoff to help his son improve his game.
But soccer means more for the Columbian family than just a good source of exercise, Camacho said. It also helps them stay in touch with their culture.
“It’s so easy to leave your country behind and come here and have great opportunities,” he said. “But what happens a lot of the time is that you lose connection with your culture, especially when you become a first-generation or second-generation kid.”
“Your parents are doing what they have to to make sure they meet ends. A lot of the time the cultural aspects of things are forgotten, so it’s important for me to be able to show my kids, ‘Look this is what your roots look like,’” he said.
If you really think about it, that is at the heart of why soccer — or football if you live outside the U.S. — is considered to be the biggest sport in the world, explained Focascato.
“For some people, it’s like oxygen,” she said, noting that nearly every country plays some version of the game. “Soccer is like nothing else. It’s a common language people use to come together.”
So it makes all the more sense why the Boston Unity Cup has seen participation increase since it started five years ago, growing from 16 soccer teams in its first year to 40 in this year’s tournament, explained John Tobin, Northeastern vice president of city and community engagement.
“Things take time to build, but as long as there is a competitive spirit on the pitch and the camaraderie of bringing people together, the word spreads,” he said. “I guarantee there will be well over 60 teams here next year. There are hundreds of countries in the world. Forty is a good start, but we have a ways to go.”
“Northeastern is truly a global university, and soccer is a global sport,” Tobin added. “We have so many people from around the world who have so many differences in terms of language, culture and upbringing all converging next to our campus.”