Herb Benham: This 'soccer mom' is like no other
| Friday, May 07 2010 04:04 PM
Last Updated Friday, May 07 2010 04:04 PM
She's never been married. Never had kids. Meg Conlon is an unlikely candidate for a Mother's Day story.
Some mothers are made and others spin themselves into the fine but sturdy cloth of motherhood. This is the story of how a 45-year-old native of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, became a mother figure to hundreds of young soccer players. Many come from the poorest homes in Bakersfield.
And what's motherhood without a little sacrifice? For Conlon, that meant giving up a career and moving across the country. She lives on savings and a belief that these kids, whom she calls generous, polite and hard-working, are worth every penny that she does not make.
Angel Velasquez is typical of the players Conlon has worked with in Bakersfield and, before that, Los Angeles. One of seven kids being
raised by a single mother, he joined the team when he was 12.
"Angel jogged two miles to practice every day and never missed," Conlon said. "The coach didn't know if he could play him much but Angel said, 'It doesn't matter, this is a safe place for me to be.'" Two years later, Angel made the under-14 national team. Since then he has played in England, Costa Rica, Boston, Oregon and Florida.
A journey to giving
Conlon started in sales in the furniture business. Her family had a warehousing and repair company in New York. Fifteen years ago, one of her clients was the VP of operations for the Robinsons-May Company in L.A.
"I was wining and dining him," she said. "He told me, 'I am involved with a soccer team made up of impoverished kids. Donate the money that you would have used for entertaining to our team, and you and I will eat at In-N-Out."
Conlon did. She also showed up at soccer practice to see where her company's money was going. She fell in love with the 18 players on this under-12 team called the California Heat.
"I started flying out every other weekend," she said. "The kids were from places like South Gate, Watts and Compton." Conlon helped with fundraising, tutoring and shoring up homes that often had a single working parent and many children.
"The VP from Robinsons-May and I had often had our business meetings on the way to picking up kids," Conlon said.
Four years later, the California Heat had become one of the best youth teams in the country and had the most highly recruited players anywhere, according to the Los Angeles Times. The players went to colleges like Harvard, Brown, UCLA, Georgetown, Pomona-Pitzer, St. John's University and the University of Connecticut.
Often, they were the first in their families to go to college.
"I took care of some of the students who came to the East Coast for college," Conlon said.
The boys were outstanding (seven of the 18 were drafted into Major League Soccer after college), but there were two players of note. One was future Olympic star Landon Donovan and the other was Ricardo Gutierrez, who was one of three players on the team from Bakersfield.
Flash forward eight years. Donovan has become a world-famous soccer player. Gutierrez, now 28, is a graduate of Albertus Magnus College in Connecticut and has returned to Bakersfield, where he works for Kern County Mental Health as a social worker.
An offer she couldn't refuse
Gutierrez started a soccer team called the Central California Blues. He wanted to do for young people in Bakersfield what had been done for him previously.
He called Conlon in New York to help him with the organization and fundraising. The timing was right. A year ago, Conlon moved to Bakersfield.
"We helped 18 kids go to college before," she said. "Now there are 18 more just like them."
Conlon works 12 to 14 hours a day, checking grades, arranging tutors, teaching players how to use the Internet, contacting college coaches, taking kids to school and schlepping players around in the team's 5-year-old Ford van.
Gutierrez is equally devoted and after getting off work at 4 p.m., coaches, drives and encourages until 9 p.m.
There are now 150 players of all ages in the club. Raising money is not pretty. In order to go to the Dallas Cup, one of the most prestigious tournaments in the country, the players stood in front of Walmart all day on the weekends and sold candy bars for $1. Conlon stood with them.
"We raised $23,000, one dollar at a time," she said.
Conlon also spoke at Rotary clubs (the 20-30 Club bought 10 pairs of cleats for the boys), and the Boys and Girls Club agreed to host a pancake breakfast.
The oldest boys play on an under-16 team in the Premier League.
During the fall, they travel 12 straight weekends to San Juan Capistrano.
This year, the Blues finished fourth of 12 teams and have been ranked in the top 10 in the country the last four years.
It's usually the coach, Conlon and perhaps one other parent at the games. The other parents cannot afford the time off or the gas to watch their children play.
"Last year a woman came up to me and said, 'Are you guys losing, because I didn't hear any cheering on the sidelines,'" Conlon said.
"No, I told her, we're winning 2-1. Our parents just can't come to the games."
Today is Mother's Day. The Central California Blues are in the quarter finals of the National Cup in Temecula.
"I told them to win the tournament and give me a Mother's Day gift," she said.
Win, behave, study, contribute to the community and go to college. Enough Mother's Day for any mother.
