This Low-Cost, High-Level Soccer Club Turns Competition Into Opportunity
Jared Barbosa is an Elementary School guidance counselor who was raised by a professional soccer player. His dad, Manoel “Boom Boom” Barbosa, competed all over the world before settling down in Nashua, N.H.
Jared says professional soccer was his dad’s ticket out of poverty in Brazil. College soccer was his ticket to economic mobility.
He doesn’t think high level sports should exclude low-income kids.
Every Sunday, Babosa plays soccer on the Main Dunstable Soccer Fields in Nashua. He’s on a league of 150 or so mostly Latino guys who have been competing there weekly for years. “There’s kids all over, there’s family, there’s food, there’s music,” he said, “It’s just a good time.”