Brandeis F.C., the club soccer team, is a unique club in that it focuses not only on its on-field product but also on community service as well. The club was honored with the “Clubs in Service Award” last year, given annually to a club on campus dedicated to community service.

“[The club was] originally chartered in 1998, but we sort of fell apart and I [helped] re-establish the club two years ago,” said captain Benjamin Berson ’15. “When I started the club, I thought what’s important is building a community around the team, not just a team on the field but a team off the field [as well]. So I thought a great way of doing that … would be community service. It’s a way to give back to the community, a way to influence the Brandeis community as a whole and the local community.”

Berson explained that BFC began its community service by working with Waltham Group to set up a soccer clinic for local children in the last two years.

“We talked to [Language and Cultural Enrichment], one of the  [clubs under] Waltham Group and that’s when we did our first event with them, running a soccer clinic,” Berson said. “All the kids came out to the turf, we did some basic soccer dribbling and shooting and played a game at the end. It was a positive experience for everyone so now that’s a semester event we do.”

The club’s community service was expanded in the past year to include other community service opportunities, including raising money for Relay for Life and working with Spectrum, a Waltham Group club that works with children with developmental disabilities.

“Spectrum is a [group that focuses on younger children] and a little smaller [than the clinic], but they liked it so much this semester we have been trying to do it more,” Berson explained. 

“We’ve done it twice this semester, and we’re probably going to do it even more because they have an outdoor activity time to get the kids social with each other … and we facilitate that. It’s been really amazing.”

On the field, the club has enjoyed relative successes as well, defeating the College of the Holy Cross club team in September and going up against New England area sides, including Boston University, Boston College, Harvard University and Dartmouth College.

“The games are pretty high level,” Berson explained. “Most of our players played varsity in high school. We do more losing than we do winning, but [the team is] almost entirely sophomores and freshmen which means we have a lot of room to grow.”

Berson explained that it is difficult for BFC to compete with teams like BU, which has a much larger pool of available players to use during a game, so the focus of the club is less about the on-field result and more about the players’ technical ability.

Though the season runs only in the fall, Berson said the club operates year round and wants to focus on the community service aspect even after the season itself ends.

“Off the pitch, we have a bunch of guys that are living together and getting together to watch professional soccer games … [so the goal] is to keep facilitating that team-bonding activity,” Berson said. 

“Having lots of people that are involved off the field ... lets us do more fun things and more community service things because we can create more opportunities for service.”