Sometimes a single moment in childhood can shape the rest of our lives. For 2023 UCCS graduate Caden Foy, that moment was a professional soccer game in his home state of California.
“I went to an LA Galaxy with my soccer team when I was 11 and that was one of the coolest things,” he said. “We got to go out on the field, we were playing out there.”
Now, with the help of his international business degree from UCCS, Caden gets to offer that same experience to kids in Colorado Springs. He works as the Youth Sports Team Coordinator for Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC coordinating with local soccer programs to bring kids to games and help broaden their understanding of what is possible for their own futures.
“A lot of people think of sports, and they think you can either be a player or be on the coaching side,” Caden said. “They don’t realize we have an HR department; we have a marketing department; we have accounting. We have four or five different departments with 30 people working here on any given day and it opened their eyes up to ‘hey, there’s more.’”
He said his job is the best of both worlds that he envisioned when he chose to study at UCCS – he gets to be around a sport he loves while also learning about other cultures through his interactions with the Switchbacks players and the fanbase.
“We have a supporter's section at our games, and they put up flags from all the different countries where players are. There are nine or ten flags up every game so it’s super cool being able to speak to some of these players in Spanish,” he said. “I'll go to an event with a Spanish-speaking community and I’m able to translate and bring these players and get them all involved and set it all up.”
Caden said it’s all about making connections, a skill he learned the importance of while at UCCS.
“I didn’t figure that out until my junior or senior year,” he said.
Caden said he would encourage current students to embrace the opportunities they’re given by the open culture between faculty and students at UCCS.
“Stay after class to talk to the teacher. They’re going to get to know you and they’ll push for you. If you want a certain job in a certain industry, they will put in the effort to reach out. If I would have started earlier, who knows the connections I could have made or where I could be.”