Ep. 14 - Part 1 - Building a Nation: Weaving the Game into the Fabric of the Marshall Islands

Embark on an illuminating quest through the soccer universe with us as we team up with Lloyd Owers and Matt Webb from the Marshall Island Soccer Federation. Our exchanges stitch together the rich fabric of soccer's influence, from Wes' role as Managing Director for USL Arkansas to Lloyd's journey from British football to the technical helm of the islands' soccer dreams, and Matt's marketing prowess shaping the sport's presence. Together, they paint a vibrant portrait of the Marshall Islands' soccer tapestry, exploring the nuances of soccer culture where palm trees fringe the playing fields.

Feel the pulse of passion as they recount the creation of a national soccer team in an area where the sport was once a shadow. The crew touches on the inspiring stories of community champions who've turned soccer pitches into classrooms, igniting a love for the game among island youth. In this heartfelt narrative, we celebrate the tireless efforts of those dedicated to weaving soccer into the very fabric of Marshallese life, fostering not only a team but an enduring affection for the sport.

Join the guys as they tackle the gravity of climate change and its impact on the Marshall Islands, and how soccer serves as a beacon of hope and awareness. They share how the sport is evolving on the islands, from harnessing basketball courts for futsal to sculpting a developmental pathway for young talent. The episode culminates in a reflection on the potential of soccer to unite, inspire, and create a legacy that transcends the pitch—a testament to the unifying power of the beautiful game.

To stay up to date on the latest news and to support the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation, head over to their official website.

Transcript

Wes Harris: 0:04

Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of USL Arkansas. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, northwest Arkansas. This is a journey we want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way. Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes. Telling the story of our club. Pitch to Pro podcast is proudly sponsored by PodcastVideoscom. Podcastvideoscom is Northwest Arkansas's premier podcast recording studio, equipped with industry-leading equipment. The recording studio and services save you time, money and hassle. They are dedicated to helping you create, record and publish high-quality podcasts for your audience. Be sure to check them out today at PodcastVideoscom.

Wes Harris: 1:07

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Pitch to Pro podcast. I'm your host, wes Harris, managing director for USL Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas is a professional soccer club playing in the United Soccer League. We have such an awesome conversation on tap for you guys today with my guests from the Marshall Island Soccer Federation. We have Mr Lloyd O'Hors, technical director and commercial and marketing director. Mr Matt Webb, gentlemen, thank you guys. So so much for joining me today, thank you, thank you, roman. So there's so much to talk about with what you guys have going on. I feel like we're kind of cousins a little bit in terms of our projects. But and we'll touch on that but tell us first, before we talk about the Marshall Islands and your project, tell us a little bit about yourselves, you, lloyd, we'll start with you, kind of a little bit of your background, how you kind of got into football and all that.

Lloyd Owers: 1:59

Yeah, growing up in the UK is one of those things where I think if you don't play football, you are the outcast. Everyone has to play and you just almost dragged up to play and I started playing officially within structured games at five. 30 years on, we're still involved, and it's one of those ones where, yeah, the passion just kept growing and growing. I needed an okay level until I stopped playing fully around 24. I was coaching from 16 and then decided to focus on just the coaching side, to stop playing and just coach. And one of the early coaching positions for myself was working in a club called Chelmsford City, which is in the National League South so that's step five of the English pyramid and it was a really good environment to be in for a young mid-20s coach. Yeah, I was working around good players, ex-professional players as well. We had a guy that played for Northern Ireland, played as part of Jose Mourinho, one of his younger players when he first took over at Chelsea. Yeah, yeah. So it was good to be around that environment.

Lloyd Owers: 2:59

And then I went on to, came to the US, worked around New Hampshire, went to Canada for a little bit, came back to the UK and worked for the FA for three years or so, working mainly around coach development, coach education and overseeing five to 11-year-old projects. Yeah, and then decided to move, moved up to from Essex in the sort of southeast area of England to the Midlands area and, yeah, from that point I worked for Oxford United, oxford City, different clubs, mansfield Town in League One and then moved into education, which was a bit of a different situation. I was coaching on the side, teaching full time, retrained as a teacher in that period, still had the passion for coaching and realized, yeah, that's where I want to be. So I ended up doing a master's degree in coaching and that led to various opportunities and one of them being the Marshall Islands, which is where we're at now and we'll talk about a little bit more as we go on. But, yeah, so that's the current role technical director for the Marshall Islands.

Wes Harris: 4:03

No, brilliant, brilliant. That's an incredible journey and I know we'll delve a little bit more into that, but it's interesting how close a coach is really a teacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How often they correlate Right, yeah, yeah. So that's brilliant, Matt. How about yourself through?

Matt Webb: 4:19

Similar to Lloyd. It's the right of passage in the UK. Right, you're born, you play football. So growing up from like five ages, five and six kicking a ball around, absolutely obsessed anything to do with soccer, and I'm an absolute nerd as well. So if I wasn't playing I was like dreaming up writing stories about creating football teams. I guess as some symmetry that's actually what's happened.

Matt Webb: 4:41

I've never kind of made any money for football, such I'm a relative. I'm quite a good player, I'd say, but like to a certain level. So playing an amateur level, a bit of coaching on the side, but I've fallen into kind of marketing as a career, fell into it. But that's what I've been doing for like the last 15 years and absolutely kept playing football on the side. I founded teams, so big shout out to Crony's FC and Almethe team, like being my mates created probably like 10, 15 years ago. So that was a. We were able to create a team from scratch playing five sides Sunday League in England, which is a bit of an experience. So I've got some experience with the administration side, creating teams and my day job as a marketer. I guess it's kind of what's led me to this as well. So worked with the FA as well for a couple of years.

Matt Webb: 5:29

Yeah that's a bit me in a nutshell.

Wes Harris: 5:32

Well, amazing, and I'm so glad to have you guys on today, like we said, but tell us a little bit about the Marshall Islands For those that don't know where in the world. Where in the world are the Marshall Islands? The middle of nowhere, or middle of everywhere?

Matt Webb: 5:46

Yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 5:48

Yeah, it's a good one. So if you look at a map and you find Australia, if on the other side of the map you can have Hawaii, go right in the middle and zoom in as far as you can, and then there's the Marshall Islands, so you can just about fit like a pin size on Google Maps. Yeah, but yeah, it's in that middle Pacific area. Okay, Tiny, tiny little cluster of islands.

Wes Harris: 6:09

How many islands are there?

Matt Webb: 6:11

Do you know Map 20, 20, 20 and 40, let's say, because they're not purely like coral atolls. Okay, okay, inhabited summer. Inhabited summer, I think it's 24 inhabited isn't it?

Wes Harris: 6:22

Yeah, yeah, there you go, there you go, and roughly. What is it Like? 30,000 on the islands.

Lloyd Owers: 6:28

Yeah, 40,000, I think 30,000 on Maduro, the main capital, okay, okay, and then another 10,000, 12,000 dotted around the different other islands as well. Gotcha, you've also got Guajaline, which is something that we might come to in the later in the podcast, but a massive US influence, us military base on there, and there's a tiny little island called Ebi, which is the Marshallese sort of connection to Guajaline. So I think it's around 12,000, mostly American soldiers, gotcha. Yeah, that feeds into the population as well.

Wes Harris: 6:59

There you go, there you go. And how I think we were talking, you know. Last night I think somebody made the comment like the widest part is two city blocks at any one point. Oh, it's crazy.

Matt Webb: 7:12

Yeah, imagine if everyone should just go and just look at this. On Google you can do it justice of words, but essentially it's a ring of coral reef. So you've got a lagoon in the middle and it's an aorist part you can probably stretch your arms out and the ocean either side it's crazy, it's like us is wider, but that's one of the challenges we face and I'm sure we'll touch upon it. It's fitting a full size soccer field on there. Yeah, I mean, I've had to build into the sea to do this.

Lloyd Owers: 7:37

It's 26 miles, I think, isn't it From Topham Long, though what do you think? That's the main island in the country. It's only 26 miles from top to bottom. Yeah, that's almost.

Wes Harris: 7:46

It's essentially it's 26 miles. That'll basically get you from Bentonville to Fayetteville in the Northwest Arkansas corridor.

Lloyd Owers: 7:54

So it's essentially that stretch Main island, wow, and I think it's 30,000 people that live on this main 26 mile stretch.

Wes Harris: 8:02

That's no wider than two city blocks, it's wider, which is oh my gosh.

Lloyd Owers: 8:05

Like you know, row of houses, one building's one side and a row of houses on the other side and behind it, you've got water wherever it is. Yeah, the Lagoon, yeah, wow, very narrow.

Wes Harris: 8:15

Yeah, okay, okay, well, great, and I did do a little bit of Google Earthing and it's beautiful out there in the Pacific, but, yeah, definitely, you know, working within the constraints of what they have there, right, and so we'll talk a little bit about that too. But you know, and you touched on this and we'll tease this a little bit. We'll kind of come back. This is going to be a two-part episode, just where everybody knows, but you know so. But to tease this a little bit, because we'll come back to this in part two, you mentioned it a little bit, but Northwest Arkansas, for those that don't know, has the largest population of Marshallese people anywhere in the world outside of the islands themselves.

Wes Harris: 8:58

So we have a little over 15,000 Marshallese people, mostly in Springdale, arkansas, and the reason for that is back in World War II the US did some testing of their bombs in and around the Marshall Islands. A lot of people fled as a result of that and a lot of them actually found work here in Northwest Arkansas and the Tyson plants, which are in Springdale, and so that's kind of what started and then it just kind of grew and snowballed from there and now again we have almost 15,000 people a little more than that Marshallese living in the NWA you know market today, so we'll come back to that. So Talked a little bit about you guys' background, talked about the Marshall Islands. How did this project get started? How did you guys get to be involved? How did you guys start along this path of creating the last nation in the world to have a nationally socrative?

Matt Webb: 9:55

I guess that actually predates us. So before myself and Lloyd Gungvold are on board in the Marshall Islands right now who are taking ownership of Fairfaring Project. So back in 2020, a guy called Shem Levi and a couple of other guys in the Marshall Islands basically interesting. The sport has grown massively, I think in parallel with how it's grown in the States as well of the guarantee of soccer. So kids have awareness of what's going on Messi, ronaldo, they watch games and in the playground they're kicking the ball around. They've got shoe fans and shirts yeah, man city. Yeah, literally. But there's no structure, there's no organized soccer taking place. So they recognized this and thought there's an opportunity and something needed to be done, created the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation board and an organization. Obviously, covid happened and stuff like that.

Matt Webb: 10:41

Yeah, yeah yeah, nothing really. They were pretty like laying low. For a couple of years. Myself and Lloyd, both simultaneously not knowing each other, read an article online on the athletic about the last station on the soccer team and this board who are on the mission to change this, and I think both of us were like, wow, this is in our then diagram of love and passion and skills Travel, soccer, adventure and I'm being marked in two. I was like I need to get involved in this. Yeah, searched up Lemlovye or Shemlovye on Facebook wherever I could any social media, found his email pestilence. I wanted to work for free. Let me get involved. Yeah, that was in probably fall 22 maybe. Yeah, yeah, right, started to get involved in a project. I was looking at it from like top. What we're gonna do? Obviously my background brand marketing. Sure, lloyd's obviously coaching, so you had yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 11:36

So then mine was very similar. I read the same article but at the same time, I was doing log sites and interviews online on the site. I did one with a couple of guys from Samoa and we started talking about their role and I had a few people connect to and watch and read the interview from the Pacific. I reached out to a couple of different nations, one of them being Shem from the Marshall Islands, and, yeah, he basically said look, can you help us on the technical side, can you help to grow the game? And obviously I started working on that project. You started working on the marketing side. Then, randomly, on LinkedIn, we realized hang on, we've never been introduced by the way Working on it, oh yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 12:19

Shem's both working on something project. Never told us about each other. They never told you we just happened to find each other Because we were talking about the mother's line. Yeah, what I'm doing is yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 12:28

And then because, like what, who are you Like what? Oh, I know Shem, I know Shem, he's not solders, I know Shem, shem knows yeah, he knows and knows you. And then we got together. Basically we just like, look, we'll just put these together. So we had the technical side, we had the marketing side. I reached out to a guy called Justin Wally, who's part of our sort of trio of people. He looked after the press and communications and then together we just worked out a strategy of, okay, what do we do? How do we do this? From January 23, we just basically hit the ground running. It's been a full day. What do you do from that point onwards?

Matt Webb: 12:59

Yeah, 14 or so months, yeah, since that point, incredible incredible.

Wes Harris: 13:05

Well, you touched on it a little bit and I'll have a little bit of an aside here. So you talked about kids knowing what's going on. You're seeing PSG shirts. You're seeing all these other different kids out there that's not sitting in the pool.

Matt Webb: 13:16

Is that me In a room we need to discuss right now? There's something in the room.

Wes Harris: 13:20

For those that don't know, lloyd is a Chelsea fan and Liverpool are recently crowned Carabao Cup or League Cup champions. The kids came out in the end to beat Mr O'Hors Chelsea, so I had to wear this today. This is kind of my uniform. I do wear soccer kits from all over the world today, so, but I understand you guys may be able to the chain, to be honest.

Matt Webb: 13:50

It's a chain, for Lloyd's sake. He's like a cease boiling of a raid Stop. In honor of our appearance, we have a the camera ready. Marshall Islands Soccer Federation. That's the first ever national team jersey. Oh, I have history in the making. I think you look like this, would you'd wear this?

Wes Harris: 14:07

He looks better. Oh, that would be incredible. I'd be happy to happy to. This is great. Look at this, Look at this. We'll get this on here. You even got the number right. I was that. That's what that is. I was the number 10.

Matt Webb: 14:20

Wow.

Wes Harris: 14:21

I like it, we'll get it. We'll get it on there for the episode here. There we go. So there we go.

Lloyd Owers: 14:26

There we go. He's a rep in both lights, to be fair. Still a little red.

Wes Harris: 14:30

Just teasing you, yeah, yeah, yeah, just a tease, just a tease. There is a color, so I mean you guys kind of touch on it a little bit. Bring people into your world. What is it like to start a national team from scratch? I mean, we're, that's what we're doing with this show is bringing people into our world. Here we're at the USL Arkansas, and what is it like to start a professional soccer club? Yeah, you know, kind of from scratch. You guys are doing something similar, but there's definitely different nuances to it, not just from the location, obviously, but also a national team is very, very, very different, right? And so bring people into your world. What's that like?

Matt Webb: 15:10

Before we start, I think we'll give some shout out, so people who couldn't be with us today Obviously, myself and Lloyd, we're on this trip this week. We're lucky enough to be invited in today, but there's a lot of other people behind the scenes. Yeah, as you can mention. Obviously, the board in Maduro.

Lloyd Owers: 15:22

Yeah, so we have Shemna Vial, obviously as a president, the vice president, devine Waiti, the general secretary is John Kalimana, and then you have the treasurer, paul Domingo, and the non-executive board member who is like the link to education systems guy called Tony Theome. So they're the board members, but then we'll see myself and Matt. We have Justin Walley, who is part of our main trio and British guys involved, and then Justin just finished actually in the last line of the self, he's just finished a trip there. Wonderful.

Matt Webb: 15:54

Yeah, we've got Pat McStay who's assistant. Actually he's in the US as well. Yeah, he's in Virginia. He's helping us to play recruitment. We've got a couple of volunteers, so Ed Miller, who's with us actually in Springdale, assistant of social media and outreach, and Max Hoogen, who's a university student in the UK. So we're a small gang and I think more of the chiefs so far kind of belies Royal volunteers. By the way, none of us are getting paid a dime for this. It's purely for the love of it and it's probably taken over our lives much more than we can imagine. Yeah, so probably Royal One is. It becomes all in, comes in when you're starting the team. It is fantasy football or fantasy soccer, it's everything. Yeah, look, your question is how do you?

Wes Harris: 16:34

start? How do you start? I mean, there's differences right Between. You know we had to find a league, we had to get an expansion.

Lloyd Owers: 16:41

You know we asked where we want to go there, obviously, game, yeah, yeah, game, like Max said, you know, the game, the sport was liked anyway. People liked the sport, people wanted to play the sport but didn't really have the structure or the infrastructure, I guess, to actually do it. And we're talking as low as equipment wasn't there Mm-hmm, balls, bibs, cones, goals, whatever weren't there. So the first thing for us was making sure that we managed to get an awareness around the project and once we realized on, you know, announced on social media. The worldwide media took an interest quite quickly and it was brilliant because it helped us to gain that awareness quite quickly. And then what that led to is people donating. So we had the kit and equipment going out to the Marshall Islands. We were able to use that.

Lloyd Owers: 17:21

But then it was a case on on the technical side. I can cover that bit A lot, you know, we knew. Obviously you can cover the other side of it, but I think from the technical aspect it was a case of how do we grow the game, how do you get people to want to play? Yeah, the main thing was working from top down, bottom up and meeting in the middle, top down being can we find players that around the world who are Marshallese and fortunately we did that and that's why we were in Springdale, is it?

Lloyd Owers: 17:42

But then on the flip side, we had how do we get kids playing? Yeah, so wrote like a school curriculum has been signed off, the Ministry of Education's allowing that to go into schools. Long term, kids will obviously grow up playing the game and that's part of their physical education curriculum, so they can grow up to play the game. And then, before I was able to obviously get out in the summer and have actual physical sessions that now run weekly, we had to make that appearance of. This is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it. Can you help us? And I suppose that's where, like, the commercial side was yeah, it was massive for it Wes.

Matt Webb: 18:15

Can you hazard a guess how much a FIFA nation receives in money every every four years, Two years, Two years?

Wes Harris: 18:24

I probably should know this, but $100,000.

Lloyd Owers: 18:29

No, it's approximately like a million dollars a year. Okay, for two years. There you go Three years. So there are two, three different funding streams, levels. So the lower sort of ranked you are smaller nations. It's a lot more than I would for around a million. Higher nations, more structure, more happening, bigger countries there you go the three, and that's so. There you go.

Matt Webb: 18:47

There you go. Guess how much we get as a non FIFA nation, is it?

Wes Harris: 18:50

back down to my $100,000 or zero, zero, zero.

Matt Webb: 18:53

Did we?

Wes Harris: 18:54

squat. So that's the position we're in.

Matt Webb: 18:56

So obviously, lloyd can talk a great length how you initiate a football culture, a soccer culture, implement national team players and coaching. But for me, coming into a project is trying to look at how can we make sustainable, because our goal is to be a FIFA nation. We want to compete in a World Cup qualifier why not? That is the ultimate goal for us, absolutely as it should be. But to get to that point we're going to be able to do that and to get that kind of share of a FIFA pie, we need to do certain things and make ourselves and you show, demonstrate credibility and sustainability as well. So my job was to come in and how can we get to that point fully bootstrapped, like we're funding every single step away ourselves? So, yeah, we receive zero from any kind of governing body whatsoever. We get nothing from the Marshallese government, although it should but we don't get zero from any outside body, any other confederation. We are purely raising every single die myself.

Matt Webb: 19:51

So we came in, we launched a GoFundMe, probably within a couple of weeks, some very generous people who have helped us fund the initial step side journey Myself. So the board already kind of had a logo. Don't want to disrespect it, but it was a kind of Microsoft paint job. One of the things I see is we can make be sustainable through some merchandise and really leverage. We are the last national team. There we go. We'll talk about the backstory of that as well. I think I was really interested in how we kind of pulled together like global fan base as well to raise. It's a really kit, by the way.

Wes Harris: 20:25

I mean, I'm not just saying that, yeah, it's really good.

Matt Webb: 20:28

And there's more to come with this as well but like as far as steps. So we were lucky to attract a few sponsors, trying to leverage. We had so much media attention. We were blown away how invested people were and I think some of it has helped us being British. So, for example, with BBC British ball pressing crew took an interest. You got on BBC breakfast, the biggest morning breakfast show in the UK. Wow, within a couple of weeks this announcement maddened live in the studio, which is huge. Sky Sports, espn skiff yeah, obviously You're like, yeah, obviously. Yeah, all the big New York Times, all the big ones. We've had articles published in there. So that was huge from a PR standpoint. I mean Lloyd shout out for him. He must have done double digits, triple digits of podcasts and recordings. You are a dapp at youth. Yeah, I was.

Lloyd Owers: 21:13

You're a pro at the new job at the same time and it was like I think it was literally the same day. I remember going into the office the same day we launched social media. I remember sitting in the office having an induction to the new job and my phone was just like I was looking at that more than the listen to these guys. Yeah, and you're not still employed by him are you? You know what I mean, I actually am not.

Wes Harris: 21:35

I had to say it yeah, he was not paying attention, yeah, they cut, they cut out.

Lloyd Owers: 21:39

I did that and a funny thing is actually my bosses were so good with it, even though I'd only been there two weeks. I remember saying to my boss at the time like I had a phone call from the BBC. They've asked me to go to Manchester tomorrow morning. Can I go? And he was like I'll just go. And then his boss was what. He didn't tell him. So his boss was watching BBC Breakfast and he's like what is the word Gus?

Matt Webb: 22:07

Is he in the book for us?

Wes Harris: 22:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 22:10

Wait a minute. But yeah, it was crazy. It was like two free podcasts a day, Radio interview, whatever.

Matt Webb: 22:18

And we did not discriminate and I think we are so appreciative of every single person who's taken a time to read about our story, talk about our story and cover it. So you've done all kind of, all manner of podcasts, some small, some big. You've done some, obviously Justin's- done loads as well.

Lloyd Owers: 22:32

Yeah, you've been quite a collective thing.

Matt Webb: 22:34

Yeah, and I think that's been the main thing is getting our name out there. We haven't discriminated, all like we, so thankful for anybody who was just yeah, anyone wants to be involved, so we'll talk about it. We love this, so we're happy to talk. So that's been one aspect in growing the I mean our social media. If there was a world ranking of, we would just say when would you write the martial arts in the world? Oh, like nations first, social media followers and engaged.

Lloyd Owers: 22:55

I think we we, yeah, we saw it. Some of the bonkers calculations. I've seen nations that have got, you know, 2000 followers on Twitter X. We're up to like 7,700. Yeah, and like, the random winners has been quite good. That's great. Yeah, and it's. I think that's part of the reason why people have taken an interest in it, because it's just so unique. But, yeah, random as well. Yeah, like when you think of a federation starting it's starting to have a barrier. You know you're talking to yourself when I think.

Wes Harris: 23:23

I think there's also and you guys can speak to this more than I can I think there's also some aspect of kind of the, the where are the Marshall Islands and what are they dealing with from a kind of a climate change and kind of existential crisis? To be honest, I mean, I think that that helps draw some of that right which, you know, good autumn, I mean, you know, this is what you guys need is the. I think it's awareness to everything.

Matt Webb: 23:48

Yeah, from day dot, we were very aware of the unique power and, like the opportunity we have to do more than football. Soccer is always about more than just it is or we're getting people together and we probably haven't done enough of this so far, but it's going to be part of our journey. So, for those of you who don't know, like the Marshallese people, like they're fascinating and rich history, rich culture you touched upon it at the start like why they're linked with the US, kind of atrocities, of a nuclear bomb and it's actually nuclear kind of a way. And legacy week yeah, this week in Springdale's, there's a lot of things around that. That's like crazy if you begin to dig into that as well. When you've got a climate change. So if those of you don't know, like by as early as 2030, parts of Main Island could be uninhabitable.

Lloyd Owers: 24:32

I remember standing in the place. Yes, and it's a part of the main road called Rita Maduro and that's the area where it's like predicted to be underwater, and you stand in there and you think, like this won't be here in potentially six years time.

Matt Webb: 24:45

It's unbelievable, crazy. Yeah, so we want to use soccer as a platform, not only to I say not only put Marshall Islands on the map, but keep it on the map. That's out of our unofficial tag. Wow, there you go.

Lloyd Owers: 24:56

Yeah, do you want to? I mean a position to say about the, you know, the second jersey or not. Really, I don't know.

Matt Webb: 25:04

No, that's I mean. So yeah, I mean, you did yeah.

Lloyd Owers: 25:06

Look at me. Look at me, I'm about to pop up. I'm also not giving away too much, no.

Matt Webb: 25:13

So one of the things yeah, we're going to release another one later this year, so it's going to be more of a Marshallese culture and climate awareness Okay. So it's going to like represent with like emberlands and motifs of like flora and fauna and icons of these cultures as well, and we want to be able to use that to raise awareness of kind of climate change as well, tying in with, like UN climate change awareness week and yeah, so that's that's the kind of that's how we're going to kind of lean not lean into that, but we need to raise awareness at the same time. So we've got a lot of followers for the soccer side and, yeah, whenever we send out one of these jerseys to one of our like shout out to everyone who's purchased the jersey very generous, and we've been sending those out Gradually. We include, like a little information pack saying this is what you're helping to do and this is why you should care, and like we got such great feedback on that as well.

Matt Webb: 26:00

So yeah big shout out to everyone who's supported us. So I've lost track a little bit. We're operating on many different tracks. It's not an easy listen, I'm sure, but I'm not a fan of a love and gain. Once we fought, we kind of stole.

Wes Harris: 26:11

No, you're good. So, like talk, I mean, you guys talked a little bit about it, but, kind of coming back to Lloyd's world a little bit, talk a little bit about soccer on the islands, what. What did you find when you first got there? And then what have you guys kind of helped to change? And you talked a little bit about the curriculum yeah, again, the teaching, coming back and playing a playing a role there and, yeah, how you guys get involved. But talk a little bit about the sport itself on the island. What is it like?

Lloyd Owers: 26:40

Um, it was very limited because there was no real structure to it. We had kids. There's an international school called Co-op Coach has a lot of American kids or parents sorry, kids have parents who are American, who live in Maduro and they were playing in like lunchtime recess times. They were just just kicking the ball about and that was it. Like you know one ball they didn't know about. That's it, yeah, and that links into the board forming, but there was no real structure. So the aim for me was to then create the school curriculum and get that implemented but also have a youth structure of how do we play at youth level but build it towards like the national identity, so we almost same again top down, bottom up, and meet in the middle. So I created like a national identity and a philosophy which connected to like culture of the Marshallese and that like togetherness, community feel, yeah, but then the playing style of it of probably bias at a time, but it was easy to do because it was my ideas, because there was no real structure. So we're putting it together of like a national philosophy and then a youth structure that built into that so long-term. So there was a pathway from you know, kids that had never kicked the ball at five, all the way through to those who were playing national level, male and female.

Lloyd Owers: 27:45

But the main thing for us was quite quickly realizing that spaces are very limited. Yeah, so there was a, there is a national stadium which was very kindly paid for by other nations in the region, yeah, and supported financially from that, and that's going to be a fantastic facility, but it's still not ready now for us to use. So the main thing for us was getting the game played. And if you haven't got facilities to play, where'd you play? But basketball was huge in the Marshall Islands and that US culture being very common place, so it was quite quickly to realize that we needed to use basketball courts. And in what sport fits into, using basketball courts is foot cell, so foot cell links into that quite quickly. So then the kids that have never played soccer took a football soccer and you're a real friend. Yeah, they can understand the principles of basketball and apply it to foot cell, because you attack as a team of five, you defend as a team of five, the transitions are quite similar. Yeah, so then it was a case of well, they can learn that and you can build the technical ability around it because they've understand the game. So it was a case of really like formulating, formulating like a plan of how we do that.

Lloyd Owers: 28:51

So then when I went in the summer, we had sessions for kids and I remember saying, as you're adjusting, like we're only going to get a few, like there won't be many, and we had like 30 kids turn up. Same again, we had adult sessions. Didn't think many were going to turn up. We had 28, I think to the first session. Well, this is good, yeah. So then now they just maintain to manage to sort out a regular venue for them. So now we have, yeah, two sessions per week for kids. Every week. We have two sessions per week for adults every week. We have Justin went out, we did the national tournament for male male adults and for kids there's school sessions.

Lloyd Owers: 29:27

So partly one of the good things that they come out of the job was I learned how to do like content creation for courses, build courses. They massively paid, use that to my advantage to manage to build a course for the Marshall Islands using their software. Shout out to Gary Callaghan, cheers Gary. So I don't think you know it doesn't? It's not all that. Now he knows, now he knows and yeah, so basically we use the system. So I had like a coach in course, marshall Islands introductions coach and soccer made a course around it. We're out in the summer, did a workshop We've been with. I was expecting five I mean 23 coaches turn up to attend. Yeah, justin went out and did another eight, nine people from it. So we've got a coaching course. So it's growing everything from that side of it.

Lloyd Owers: 30:19

And now obviously, with the US based players, we've got the opportunity to grow it here as well. And that was obviously what brings us to Springdale women's national camp this week. Whilst we're here, you know we've got that foot cell link to it and it gives us the platform to say, look, we're growing the female side predominantly in the US, because it's quite hard to grow it right now in the Marshall Islands. But if the girls in the Marshall Islands see that there was a women's team, right, well, why can't you do that? In five years, 10 years time, yourself, give us a run and give, yeah, inspiration, that role model aspect. And then on the male side, we have got men that play. We have got men to play there and here, so we can combine the two. But yeah, I think that was. That was like the long process of it, and it was interesting to see how it's developed from there to now.

Wes Harris: 31:01

No, that's awesome and I think you know we'll touch on more in kind of part two, on kind of like what you just talked about. But you know the last bit that I wanted to just kind of ask you guys. We've talked a lot about how do you guys get started, some of the challenges that you guys face and some of the wins that you guys have had in a really short time, which is just incredible and this may be a loaded question, but what do you guys hope to achieve with this project, short term and long term?

Matt Webb: 31:31

Short term. I cannot wait to see a Marshallese team. I don't know if I short term we want to do about this year. That's very much as a leave yet national team and representative, male or female, or both, football both yeah, yeah. The absolute pride of seeing back here in action, I think would be unbelievable.

Matt Webb: 31:52

The biggest thing as well maybe not so much on the pitch and what we're really trying to drive is that sense of community. I'm very aware that we're two or three British guys coming in and we're basically here lending our expertise just to drive things forward at a faster rate. But this project is for Marshallese people and it will be by Marshallese people. We're just kind of the guardians of it for now. So we want the community, both in Maduro and the other islands and here in Springdale and across the States, to really feel connected to this project. So that's what we want to achieve. We're probably not there right now. We're still working on that. So a lot of the media interest has been UK around the world but really impacting Marshallese communities positively. So if we were to get host a game and for Marshallese community to go, I'm really supporting this team and I'm behind this project that would mean so much to us.

Lloyd Owers: 32:40

See the players we've got coming in now. So you know it's a small pool of female players, but it's still big enough for us to have that foot cell link still. And then you know, we've got a girl flying in from California, We've got a girl coming from Virginia, We've got one coming from Kansas, We've got players in Springdale. We're combining the last. But the easy thing for us to say is to them, to the girls, like today, tomorrow is you know, you will be the first, the first players of, especially your biggest players. Yeah, you want history, you will represent your country and so, cool.

Lloyd Owers: 33:12

That's gonna be interesting to see because you know, these girls are only young themselves. They're high school players mostly We've got, I think, to that have played college level that are now Early 20s, and then the rest of high school players, yeah, but they will be going there going down in history. So that's quite a little.

Wes Harris: 33:29

I'm first a key point. Yeah, is that? I mean. I think for me, that's also part of what drew me to our project and in, what is so neat and cool is Not just to get to I mean, to work in football and work in soccer, right but to help build something, yeah, and that's gonna be around, hopefully Well beyond our years, yeah, right, and and be a meaningful pillar and staple for that community and mean so much to them.

Wes Harris: 34:06

And that is, for me, one of the coolest things about the power of sport, and especially for stories like Yourselves, like us, if I can look, lump ourselves in there, to do it from nothing and Involve the community from day one and have them be a part of the process. I think it's just so cool. And how we can impact communities in a positive way through the power of sport. Yep, office bitch on the field, on the field. So it's is bro, it's, it's fantastic, it'll take care of itself. But I keep saying this over and over on every episode it's what we can do off the pitch together as a community, through the power of sport as a vehicle. That is just, you know, that's where the magic happens.

Lloyd Owers: 34:45

I think, just yeah that power of sport, that being a medium. You said a minute ago about climate change, help issues, the US connection Grating now because of the free movement they could live here, but the previously bad elements of it with the insurance assistant, yeah, yeah, just why they're here now anyway, but I think bringing awareness to all that, like you said, it's still part of that. You can sport as a medium, yeah, to promote it and If it can be real for a second.

Matt Webb: 35:11

We don't know in 20 years what the world's gonna look like. No, ever. Martial arts and other nations are really like effects still gonna be around or Looking like they're looking like now. So if we can create a real strong sense community, whatever Marshals people are and yeah, is it that bit that you said earlier?

Wes Harris: 35:27

help put them on the map, but keep them on. Yeah, that was see. That hit me like a friggin freight train. Yeah, that was unreal and it's it's Wild to even remotely think about that and try to put yourself in their shoes.

Lloyd Owers: 35:42

One of the things I've been asked before is why is it important to have the national team? And, yes, long term, get the kids playing that level. But short term, not only does it give the kids an opportunity to see that what's the biggest, but it also brings that realism to life in terms of the top level because, I've said it before, I could call runningsfields of it, where you represent your nation anywhere, your nation's flag, but that's the reality of it. They can represent the nation and if it is unfortunately a case where it might not be long term the way the nation looks now, but yeah, ten years time, they were part of the history of what it did look like when it was the way it was looking then absolutely so.

Matt Webb: 36:20

I was a way of keeping our life.

Lloyd Owers: 36:21

Yeah.

Wes Harris: 36:22

Yeah, yeah very spoiled and continuing to keep their traditions alive, in their culture alive. That's incredible. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me. We will come back. So Everybody, make sure that you come back for part two of this conversation, matt Lloyd. Thank you guys so much for joining me today and for our listeners. Remember to find us at pitched pro on all platforms, wherever you get. For your podcast, check out uslrconsocom, and at usl Arkansas for all the latest updates on the club. Until next time, northwest Arkansas Cheers.