Name: 'This market is a sleeping giant': How Energy FC coach John Pascarella is building soccer culture in OKC
Brand: oklahoman.com
SKU: oklahoman-com-306
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'This market is a sleeping giant': How Energy FC coach John Pascarella is building soccer culture in OKC

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Derek Parker When was a freshman in college, the future he’d envisioned for himself collapsed along with the North American Soccer League.The NASL was the first professional soccer league to find success in the U.S. Its heights saw players such as Pele, John Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer pass through its ranks — though its lows ended with seven teams folding in 1981 due to revenue issues. The league eventually folded in 1984.With the league’s collapse, Pascarella, a Penn State freshman on a soccer scholarship who’d only ever dreamed of playing professionally in America, had no league to play in.“The only reason in my mind for existing was to play professional soccer — college was just a way to get there — and now that league was gone,” Pascarella told The Oklahoman.Now in his second year as Energy FC’s head coach, Pascarella is doing all he can in the middle of a bustling preseason to build soccer culture in Oklahoma City.“The game growing and having a passionate fan base and viewership is important to me,” Pascarella said. “Because I don’t ever want to see my kids, or other kids, have to go through that in a generation or two down the road. I want it to be so firmly established that soccer’s a big-time sport here that there’s never a question of whether it continues to exist or to thrive."While that dream died for the time being, decades after the closure of the once-great NASL, the USL coach is still finding motivation in it.“It caused me to crap my bed for a while in college and wonder ‘what the hell am I going to do now?’ I wouldn’t want any other kid to go through that. I want them to have the dream and say, ‘I can do that, there’s a place to do that in my hometown market, or my home state, or in my region or at least in my country.’”He often visits high schools and club teams in the area with his players, giving training sessions, offering advice on how to get to the next level and doing anything he can to pass on his knowledge of the game to the younger generation.Pascarella is also passionate about finding “hidden gems” in the local soccer community. He believes there’s an untapped potential of talented soccer players in the area. His process includes going out and finding them, and sometimes inviting them to train with the team.Energy FC has seen its fair share of young talent pass through. after a stint with the USMNT, trained and played for Energy FC in between high school and college. He was selected fifth overall in the 2020 MLS SuperDraft by Orlando City. and son of Tim McLaughlin, one of Energy FC's main investors, also spent time with the Greens. He was drafted No. 8 overall in the 2020 MLS SuperDraft by the Houston Dynamo.Pascarella's motivation for finding young hidden talents isn’t just to bolster his team, but to help kids that possibly wouldn’t have had the opportunity otherwise and bring the city together for soccer.“I actually think this market is a sleeping giant,” Pascarella said of OKC. “There is talent and lot of it is hidden — If we can put them in the right teaching environments and the right soccer environments, they could turn into really, really good players.”“You have a little bit of an underground market here, and it’s one that I really want to tap in to. We want more people to get involved in the game, both as parents, as coaches, as fans and as players, but everybody for the same reason and that’s because they love the game.”One thing is apparent: Pascarella’s love for the game certainly didn’t fold with the NASL.

Derek Parker When was a freshman in college, the future he’d envisioned for himself collapsed along with the North American Soccer League.The NASL was the first professional soccer league to find success in the U.S. Its heights saw players such as Pele, John Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer pass through its ranks — though its lows ended with seven teams folding in 1981 due to revenue issues. The league eventually folded in 1984.With the league’s collapse, Pascarella, a Penn State freshman on a soccer scholarship who’d only ever dreamed of playing professionally in America, had no league to play...

'This market is a sleeping giant': How Energy FC coach John Pascarella is building soccer culture in OKC

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