Story by Sebastian Studier
Tiago poked his head around a parked car down the street facing the currently departing Bethel women’s soccer bus and nodded with a thumbs up towards Junior goaltender Izzy Smith. Izzy nodded back at him and gave him a sideways thumbs up, which is something the kids in Brazil do. The biggest smile ever crossed Tiago’s face.
Izzy was in tears.
“I remember feeling like I had to get to know all of them or I wouldn’t leave a mark on their lives,” Smith said.
Smith simply played soccer with Tiago. She passed the ball back and forth with him and used the little bit of Portuguese she knew. At the end of the day, that’s all that was needed to connect with Tiago.
The Bethel women’s soccer team spent a little over a week in the city of São Paulo, Brazil over spring break, doing service projects, playing soccer, and growing closer as a team.
This trip was especially close to head Coach Benjamin Linder, a São Paulo resident from three months old to 14.
Linder appreciated the opportunity to return to the place that had a huge impact on his life and share this with the team. Fluent in Portuguese, he was able to connect with other Brazilians.
“It felt like I had never left,” Linder said. “It was a good homecoming. My heart felt full being back”.
Abby Swanda, a junior defender for the Royals, thought it was extremely impactful for her and her teammates to be a part of such a special and important moment in Linder’s life and be with him right by his side for his homecoming.
“He was just so in his element that it blew our minds,” Smith said.
Already an outgoing person at Bethel, the team was able to see an entirely new version of their coach.
“Personally, I was like, ‘whoa who are you?’,” Smith said. “He was so outgoing in the culture, talking to all the Brazilians. He was speaking Portuguese everywhere we went.”
Swanda saw a softer side to her coach in Brazil, and a side that she believes everyone really enjoyed.
“I think everybody already loves Ben but definitely have more appreciation for him after this trip,” Swanda said.
For the Bethel soccer players, São Paulo presented a new culture and new norms. Both Smith and Swanda immediately noticed how welcoming and hospitable the people of Brazil were to them as obvious American female visitors. For Smith, everywhere she went, the people were welcoming and were always making sure that everything was taken care of for the team.
“It’s such a different level of safety and security that they want you to feel,” Smith said. “They would go out of their way to try and speak English to us, even if we didn’t know what they were saying or they had a hard time trying to understand what we were saying, they still went out of their way to try and figure it out”.
Swanda thought it was really neat to see a culture that revolved around soccer so much and shared so much passion for the game.
“When we get to play with the kids, it didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language because we all knew what we wanted to do and that’s just playing soccer together,” Swanda said.
A moment that seemed to stand out to Linder and his team was a six-hour hike that felt more like a mountain climb than a leisurely hike.
“It was fun and beautiful and hard,” Linder said.
This hike led to Smith’s favorite single moment of the trip. After the team had reached the top of the mountain that they were hiking on, they sat on a rock overlooking Brazil and listened to the song “forever he shall reign” which was playing in the background.
“I think my favorite part was knowing that as a team, we can all sit together and praise God for who he is in the blessings he continues to give to us as a team and to us individually,” Smith said. “I think it was just a really good reminder that we have people that do care”.
More team bonding occurred, in Smith’s eyes, during times when her teammates were watching each other interact with kids they worked with because they got to see each other’s passions and how they interact with people outside of their school.
“I thought a lot of character building happened when we were put into an environment where we didn’t know what the outcome was going to be,” Smith said.
Smith describes her team as “a bunch of laughers”. During team worship one night, as the girls were sitting in one big half-circle, random laughter started to break out. An organization leader named Leo then told the team that laughter is a form of praise.
“I think hearing him say that was a form of praise helped us as a team,” Smith said. “We can laugh and it’s not going to distract from what’s going on and we can do it together and it's another way to praise God as we’re playing soccer.”
Perhaps the most impactful activity of the trip for Linder’s team was listening to a speech from Daniel Dias, Brazil’s most decorated Paralympian ever who has won a total of 27 medals, including four gold medals while swimming in a wide range of events in the paralympic games. Dias has underdeveloped arms and one leg but still swims like an elite athlete and also runs an organization that disabled children find ways to play the sports they love.
Dias is a Christian man and shared the story of his upbringing and background with the team as well as his personal relationship with Jesus. Linder believes that Dias’ speech was extremely impactful for his team.
Swanda thought that Dias simply seemed like a “neat guy” and had a great time playing soccer with kids and teenagers from his foundation. She believes that had nobody told them what an amazing athlete he was, they never would have been able to guess it as he carried and presented himself in an extremely humble manner.
“Everything was just pointed back to God,” Swanda said.
For Smith, Dias’ words resonated the most when he used swimming to represent the freedom that people with disabilities can feel when competing in the sport.
“He had explained that when you put a kid in water, they weigh nothing, they can move however they want, the water bends to them,” Smith said.
During his speech, Dias said that you can be anything you want in the water and that you’re free to do whatever you want. He said that outside of the water, the kids may be constrained by a wheelchair or other barrier that hinders their ability to complete activities they love. In the water, it just doesn’t hold them back.
“That was so moving, to hear him talk about that,” Smith said.
Linder knew that Dias’ words had touched his players' hearts.
“I was looking around the room and everyone was just in tears,” Linder said.
