The boys of the 2002 WA Timbers soccer team

Hello Soccer supporters and aficionados of the internet!

 My name is Dottie and I am the assistant manager for the WA Timbers Boys2002 reds1 team. We are a soccer team made up of high school seniors and junior students from the surrounding SW corner of Washington state in the city of Vancouver. The majority of these young men have been playing together since they were little guys running around in rec leagues. These kids love to play soccer and nearly all of them have aspirations of playing for a college or university--after all these guys are student athletes and school comes first; but college these days is INCREDIBLY expensive and if they want to go, they all have to figure out how to pay for it... This is where the soccer factors in. There are collegiate soccer programs all over the US and Canada who would probably be very interested in the players on our team, but we have to get to where they can see us.  Although the Pacific Northwest is lovely and fabulous for hiking and rain accumulation. Just staying in the area limits these boys to be seen by a very small number of collegiate soccer coaches, which is why we have signed up for a very large college ID camp in Las Vegas this upcoming February 2020, The Mayors Cup. This brings me to the WHY part of why I am reaching out to you: This tournament is very expensive and is being held on a holiday weekend which seems to have doubled or tripled the "normal" Vegas costs of travel and lodging. The coach, the main manager and I figured for just travel and lodging the cost per player would be about $1000+/- , and  for the entire team we are looking at $18,000 (just writing this number down makes me shudder) and that does not include food or anything else that may pop up while we are there. This may or may not not seem like a lot of money to you, but for many of our team families it is a financial burden they cannot afford and most are financially strained already. We want our whole team to be able to attend this ID camp and have the very best shot at playing in and going to college. So instead of trying to sell you x-number of popcorn bins, Chipotle burritos, or Krispy Kreme donuts or anything else that might just collect and gather dust in your homes we are simply asking you to donate $5, $10, $20--whatever you can, and if you cannot then please share this page over your social media so that we can try to reach as many people as we can who are able to help a really nice group of boys reach a very tough goal. If you have a business or need to donate for tax reasons and want to sponsor this group of guys on their college journey (because all this is really about helping these guys get seen by college coaches, which in the end helps pay for college) we will gladly have the whole team take a picture with your banner, or business if you are local. Please just reach out to me or our coach and we can make arrangements. I will also be updating this page with our progress, game scores and possibly a highlight reel of our journey. Thank you so much if you got to the end of this and are able to donate and/ or just able to share.