Community Announcement

Thanks for your interest in the Club’s leadership transition that will be taking place over this summer. With no small amount of sadness, Coach Merlinn and I are announcing that we will be moving to Bossier City, Louisiana near the end of July to take new jobs. She will be serving as the Assistant Women’s Soccer Coach at Centenary College, and I will be working as Site Director for the local branch of Casa Deportiva Cumbre Alta.

Many of you do not know us beyond an occasional email, but others have become close friends through the work of Anglers. We will greatly miss the soccer communities of the Pikes Peak region, particularly those of Anglers and Colorado Springs Christian School.

In the fall of 2021, when Jason Rollins and I launched Anglers Football Club out of a small remnant of teams from Victory FC2, neither of us would have imagined the Club would grow the way it has. I thought leading Anglers would be a fun hobby that allowed me to stay involved in the game I loved while continuing my job as a high school economics teacher. The explosion of teams and the adoption of Woodland Park FC over the subsequent two years took me by surprise.

Stepping out of the classroom to lead Anglers full-time was another unexpected turn, but one that has started me personally down a road of fulfilling childhood dreams. Like most young athletes, I dreamt of being a professional athlete one day. After I realized I did not have the requisite abilities to reach the highest level of the game as a player, my dream shifted to being a coach or executive with a professional team. The movie Moneyball was one of my chief inspirations.

This dream seemed all but dead as I began my career as a teacher and coach eight years ago, but the process of launching Anglers and the fast track it put me on of gaining experience and knowledge in the soccer industry reawakened this desire to work at the professional level of the game. Never was this desire more tangible than on my travels to Ecuador and South Africa visiting like-minded, global soccer organizations.

Many of you will be familiar with Casa Deportiva Cumbre Alta from our mission trips serving them in 2022 and 2024 and the local camp we hosted them for here in Colorado Springs in 2023. For those not familiar, Cumbre Alta is a professional soccer team in Quito, Ecuador. They started as an amateur team and, over the course of the next decade, worked their way up via several promotions to become a third division, professional team. They hope to continue climbing the Ecuadorian football pyramid, but they also have launched sites in Bossier City, Louisiana and Tres Rios, Costa Rica over the last few years. In Bossier City, they have youth teams competing on the national level, but their ambitions go beyond youth sports. With the United Soccer League announcing its plans to implement promotion and relegation in 2028, our goal in Bossier City is to establish adult teams as well, and work our way towards growing into a professional club in the USL. Cumbre Alta’s goal in every location we go is to reach the highest level of sport possible, but more importantly (and similar to Anglers), our focus is to impact athletes and communities beyond the soccer field.

I am so grateful to the community of Anglers Football Club, especially our coaches and board members. It has been my experience so far with all of you that has prepared me to take this next step on my soccer journey.

As for the future of Anglers, I will stay involved remotely as part of the leadership team, but I will be relying on a local staff for day-to-day operations. In addition to seeking out several more coaches in both Colorado Springs and Woodland Park, we are currently in the process of hiring a part-time Sports Coordinator, who will be responsible for operational and administrative tasks such as field rentals, match scheduling, and communication with all of you throughout the season. If you or someone you know may be interested in one of these roles, you can learn more about and apply for the Sports Coordinator role here, and you can email me at brendan@anglersfc.com if you are interested in coaching this coming fall.

Let me know what questions or ideas you have. I look forward to these next eight weeks as we put this transition into motion.

Upcoming…

• We are launching a new Minisoccer League this summer!  For those who have participated in our Futsal League in the past, the structure will be very similar.  Registration is open now through June 15.  For more info or to register, click here.

Thank you to our sponsors!

We’ve invested a significant amount of time and thought into pricing, discounts, and financial aid.  But none of it would be possible without our generous supporters and sponsors, who are a vital part of this process.  If you or your business want to support the work of Anglers, email us!  We would love to share more about our vision and financial goals.

Other ways to support…