It was two hours before the first game of the MAYSA Tournament, and Millennium Regent was getting ready to compete. After not winning any games the year before, they were hoping the
outcome would be different this time around.

Things were looking promising until head coach Steven Ticknor got the call that the team’s starting striker, who is also their top scorer, wasn’t going to be able to make it. Trying to think who could take on the striker position, Ticknor landed on the youngest player on
the team, an 8-year-old and younger brother of another player on the team.

Ticknor went up to him and said, “All right, man, how do you feel about this? I’m gonna put you in striker. Can you score a goal for us?”
In a league of boys within the ages of 10 to 12, the young striker scored within three minutes of the first game starting.

Millennium Regent went on to go undefeated and win the tournament.

Ticknor’s team of young boys is a product of Millennium Soccer Club, a community-driven soccer program that works to create opportunities and access to soccer as a tool to help connect
and bring people together in the Madison community.

The soccer club was originally founded by Tom Grogg, who saw a need to support the many kids who were left out of club sports because of barriers their families cannot control. Grogg and others founded Millennium Soccer Club to bring soccer to the community to people who are excluded from youth club models.

As the program expanded from weekend clinics to indoor soccer teams, Ticknor saw an opening for volunteer coaches on Facebook, and even though he had no experience coaching, he jumped on it.

“I was like, that sounds awesome,” Ticknor says. “So I went and did the weekend clinics.” Afterwards, Ticknor reached out and asked if there’s anything else he could get involved with. “They were like, Congratulations, coach, you’re gonna go coach the first indoor team!”

Ticknor went on to coach the indoor team, and then the next year came back to coach the same crew. The group was playing well together, and the parents wanted to find a way to continue. So the team entered the MAYSA Tournament, which is hosted by the Madison Area Youth Soccer Association in the spring.

They didn’t win a single game.

Ticknor recalls the early days of the team, noting a lot of the frustrations and attitudes. “It was very much like getting down on each other if a mistake was made, or, you know, they didn’t get passed to or whatever it was,” Ticknor says.

Ticknor said the team hit “rock bottom” at a certain game. The kids were getting heated — receiving yellow cards — and talking back to the bench. “It was the coming-to-light moment where we got to set the expectations,” Ticknor says.

The group started practicing more, and that is when Ticknor introduced “word of the day.” At games and practices, he would share words like “sportsmanship,” “cooperation,” and “teamwork.” This stuck with the kids and they would come to practice, asking what the word of day is going to be. The barriers started to dissolve, and the kids really started getting to know each other and get along.

The word the team really took to is “underdog.” Ticknor brought up how his team doesn’t have the same experience as other clubs. He noted that some families struggle with transportation and just how they aren’t at the same place as other clubs.

Other clubs are well established and have concrete practice times, Ticknor says. “They do tournaments ... and we’re kind of this hodgepodge team that’s put together, showing
up, and it does feel like we’re underdogs a lot, and I think we earn that respect on the field, because so many of these kids have so much talent.”

He said the players are natural athletes with a mentality that shows they’re going to earn the right to be there.

Besides the players really establishing friendships with each other, Ticknor has also developed relationships with the players. He said they start out practice with a question like, “What is your favorite video game?” or “what is your favorite class?” so they can all get to know each other. Ticknor laughs, thinking back to the time he got out of a relationship, and the 11-year-olds were giving him relationship advice.

Their relationships and soccer have developed to the point where the team now wins tournaments. “They know their play styles. They’re connecting with that and respecting each other, lifting each other up instead of getting down on each other,” Ticknor says of the relationships the kids have with each other.

The team’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed to Millennium’s board members. “We’ve been so fortunate to have a coach like Steve who gives so much of his time,” says Haley Brisky, current president of Millennium Soccer Club. “He’s just truly invested in the success of
these kids.”

Looking to the future, investing in more teams once they grow out of Millennium’s clinics is something the club wants to do, but it comes with the challenges of money and transportation. “If we can get a team together, we are still having to find creative solutions,” Brisky says about the prospect of growing more teams. “We always want to get kids playing. We will find a way when the situation comes.”

Millennium raises money through events, fundraisers and personal donations and is always looking for donations to help support their first through sixth grade clinics, as well as teams that want to expand after they age out of the clinics. “This is just a team of 15 kids. There are so many kids out there that would just love the opportunity to play, “ Ticknor says. “Sports is such a beautiful way for people to come in, make mistakes, learn and develop themselves. I just wish there was more of this.”

Ticknor wants to grow Millennium even more to grow the program to more kids. “I want to reach all those kids... make sure that, you know, kids do have a coach that cares about them and wants to help them develop and learn about life through this beautiful game. Like, let’s
scale the work. Gosh, this is a scary world. If you can come together on a Saturday, Sunday and play soccer, that’s beautiful.”