‘A sister on my side’: How a Utah all-girls soccer team provides community beyond the pitch

Inside a sporting complex just off of West Temple in South Salt Lake, laughter and the thud of soccer cleats engulf the space.

“Block her, block her!” yelled #SheBelongs head coach Marli Berg. Throughout the hourlong practice, her soccer buddy Knox — her baby boy, just a few months old — was propped on her hip.

It’s been a year and a half since #SheBelongs – a Utah girls soccer team where half of the players are refugees – embarked through three continents to compete against local refugee soccer clubs.

Now, an all-new group of girls are preparing for a similar trip in June, for the organization’s Global Cup in Madrid against other developing #SheBelongs teams from Washington, D.C., India, Germany and Japan.

Practices, usually held on Friday or Saturday, all start the same – technical exercises disguised as icebreakers to get through the “quiet” between the 15-to-18-year-old girls, Berg said.

“Some of them have never played soccer before,” Berg said, noting that the team had just started training in September. These icebreakers, she said, “[push] them a little.”

“Especially if that’s the first thing we do and we’re a little awkward,” said Aroosa Khurram, 16, with a laugh. “It can get us to open up.”

Madyson Fuimaono was the first of her teammates to arrive at a recent Friday evening practice, already wearing her turquoise cleats. It’s her fourth year on a club team, Fuimaono said, adding that she joined #SheBelongs not only to grow her athletic skills but to create “connections.”

“To be able to just come together over a game,” Fuimaono said, “it’s like being able to see [that], in the world, we can just come together with a simple thing like soccer.”

The best part of practice comes in the last half hour, said Berg, where the teens “just play.”

“The minute you put a soccer ball out here, look how much more energy and life came out,” she said, watching from the bleachers as the girls scrimmage.

Berg said her love for soccer began when she was 4, when her parents put her in the sport to burn off her “100 mile per hour” energy. “Nothing’s changed,” Berg said, who splits her time among three soccer teams – Utah Avalanche Soccer Club, SLCC’s Women’s Soccer and Refugee Soccer (#SheBelongs’ parent organization).

“Without a doubt,” Berg said, #SheBelongs has been the highlight of her coaching career.

“Obviously, soccer is my passion. It’s my love,” Berg said, but “seeing their success,” from their first day to their last, has made the experience “just so fun.”

“Let me [be] the minuscule, minuscule part of their path,” said Berg. “Dust on [their] way to success.”

‘A second family anywhere I go’

It was a rainy July in Auckland, New Zealand, when the #SheBelongs team huddled at a local park’s soccer field. Still reeling from a match loss in Tokyo, the players listened to Berg as she, through her routine pep talk, cracked jokes.

Aliyah Bugingo, one of the gathered players, said she remembers that moment whenever she looks at her Instagram – a photo that captures her “favorite” game is pinned on her profile.

“I realized in that moment … that I have a second family anywhere I go,” said Bugingo, 18.

Months later, on the field at Taylorsville High for her first high-school soccer practice, she said the atmosphere felt off. Bugingo said she remembered thinking, “this is not my team.”

As a player for the inaugural #SheBelongs team, Bugingo spent two weeks traveling through San Francisco, Australia, Tokyo and Auckland. Before the trip, engagements with media and state officials, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, filled her time.

The bond that grew between Bugingo and the 21 other players is one she said she’s not sure she will experience again.

“I always knew that I had a sister on my side of me,” said Bugingo, her “closest” friends made while on the team.

For Khurram, who left Pakistan as a refugee and has lived in Utah since 2017, the team signals belonging.

Khurram gestured towards her teammates at a recent December practice, and said, “here, I feel like everyone can get together, no matter their background.”

Those feelings were furthered, she said, at a recent holiday party, where each player brought food from their culture. Khurram said she and her mom brought store-bought samosas, which were an instant hit with everyone.

“It’s just a big family,” she said. “Even though we haven’t known each other for so long.”

Bugingo was a year old when her family left the Democratic Republic of Congo for Ethiopia. When she was 8, she moved to Utah, a place where she didn’t feel “in tune” with her own refugee community.

Joining the #SheBelongs team was the first time, she said, she felt like she didn’t have to change to fit in.

“Going to school, making friends was really hard because I didn’t feel like I belonged in any kind of way — because either my English was not really good, or I didn’t understand their culture,” Bugingo said. “I had to change myself – physically and mentally – to fit the aesthetic of a Utah student.”

Besides wearing the team’s apparel “24/7,” Bugingo said she has sought for others not to “feel the same type of pain.”

“I carry that with me,” said Bugingo of the program’s message. “To make everybody feel [like they] belong.”

A note to readers • To help pay for the #SheBelongs Global Cup, the group is selling 12 prints from Salt Lake Tribune political cartoonist Pat Bagley, featuring an image of education advocate and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai. The prints, each signed by Bagley and Yousafzai, can be purchased at the group’s website, shebelongs.org/malala.