College Sports

A global endeavor

The sport management major is leading a global initiative to build accessible turf soccer fields in underserved communities, with the latest project underway in northern Argentina. Inspired by a childhood trip and fueled by study abroad experiences, his mission blends a love of soccer with a drive to create lasting social impact. Josh Lubetkin ’25 was […]

Published

2 months ago

May 20, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Josh Lubetkin ’25 was just 10 years old when he first understood the power of soccer. While visiting Israel, he watched local children play on crumbling courts and dusty patches – fields in name only. Yet, their passion was undeniable.

“These kids need a field,” Lubetkin remembers thinking.

Josh Lubetkin ’25, Elon portrait — Josh Lubetkin ’25, a senior sport management major, is the individual behind the Lubetkin Field Foundation, a grassroots initiative aimed at building free, accessible turf soccer fields for underserved communities around the world. His current focus? A mountaintop village in northern Argentina called Tilcara, where the country’s national team once trained for the 1986 World Cup.

That early spark has grown into a global mission. Now approaching graduation from Elon University, Lubetkin is leading efforts to construct turf soccer fields in underserved communities – his latest project taking shape in Tilcara, a remote mountain village in northern Argentina.

What began as a Bar Mitzvah project in Israel – raising $30,000 to build a turf field at a children’s school in Ofakim, Israel – has evolved into the Lubetkin Field Foundation, a grassroots initiative using soccer as a tool for community building.

“It’s about giving kids a vibrant space to come play,” Lubetkin said, his excitement rising above the many logistical challenges of international work. Those challenges include language barriers, coordination with local officials, and raising funds — all while balancing his responsibilities as a college student.

The idea for the Argentinian project emerged during Lubetkin’s January 2023 study abroad course, Through the Lens of ESPN, led by Associate Professor David Bockino. The class toured major athletic venues, national media outlets, and iconic soccer sites like Boca Juniors, River Plate, and Argentina’s national training facility – an experience Lubetkin ranks among his top five life moments. A lifelong fan of Messi, Di María, and Agüero, he saw Argentina’s recent World Cup victory as the perfect backdrop for his next effort.

Lubetkin in Ofakim, Israel — Lubetkin (in white) cuts a ceremonial ribbon at the opening ceremonies for the soccer field he helped build at a children’s school in Ofakim, Israel. Photo courtesy of Lubetkin.

In Tilcara, Lubetkin found both inspiration and opportunity. With help from Juan Franchini, a sport consultant and professor at the Argentine University of Enterprise (UADE), he’s navigated the cultural and administrative steps needed to bring the project to life.

Franchini emphasized the importance of the field to Tilcara, a “small and humble community of 12,000,” which has never had a public soccer facility with artificial turf.

City officials hope to build a full soccer complex, and Lubetkin’s field — located on land once used by Argentina’s national team — is the first step.

“This field has to be public and open to everyone. That’s my only requirement,” Lubetkin said. “And it has to be turf, so the community doesn’t have to worry about maintenance.”

The new field – funded once again through a $30,000 campaign – includes goals, balls, and basic equipment. Construction is already underway, with site leveling and concrete work in progress.

Franchini praised Lubetkin’s professionalism and maturity throughout the project’s easy stages.

“He works like a real colleague of sport industry,” Franchini said Lubetkin. “He is responsible and committed to his job. And he is a person you can trust because when he says something, he does it.”

Josh Lubetkin at Gran Parque Central — As part of their January 2023 study abroad course, Through the Lens of ESPN, Lubetkin and his classmates toured Gran Parque Central in Montevideo, Uruguay. Having opened in 1900, Gran Parque Central is the oldest current stadium in Americas.

Soccer has always been central to Lubetkin’s life. Though he didn’t compete at the college level, he played varsity soccer in New Jersey and has stayed connected through travel. During a semester abroad in London, he attended 23 Premier League matches – visiting nearly every stadium in the league.

As a young project leader, he admits he’s sometimes underestimated. “People don’t always think it’s real or legitimate at first,” he said. But each completed field adds to his credibility and momentum.

His ultimate vision is ambitious: to build six fields on six continents, creating accessible spaces that empower and connect communities through play. Antarctica might be the only holdout, he joked.

Although Lubetkin originally applied to Elon as a psychology major, a first-year sport management course with Assistant Professor Khirey Walker changed his path. “That class flipped the switch,” Lubetkin said. “I realized I could build a career around what I love.”

Elon student Josh Lubetkin with Lucas Paquetá — While studying in Europe, Lubetkin regularly attended Premier League matches. During one such outing, he grabbed a selfie with Lucas Paquetá, a Brazilian soccer player for West Ham United. Photo courtesy of Lubetkin.

“As a student, Josh was always locked in on the material but never afraid to crack a smile or spark some fun in class,” Walker said. “His energy, curiosity, and can-do attitude made him a standout.”

What stood out most, Walker added, was Lubetkin’s curiosity. “He consistently went above and beyond – connecting class concepts to real-world issues and his own career goals.”

Lubetkin now hopes to combine his passion for sport with a career in advertising. After graduation, he’ll head to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to work as an account coordinator for Zimmerman Advertising – a role he hopes will eventually lead him back into the sport industry.

For now, his focus remains on Tilcara and growing the Lubetkin Field Foundation. He’s managing the project solo – building a website, applying for grants, handling fundraising, and spreading the word. His ultimate goal is to turn the foundation into a formal nonprofit and expand to new global locations, with London already on the horizon.

“This has always been about more than just a field,” he said. “It’s about creating safe, joyful spaces for kids to play — and hopefully changing lives in the process.”

Interested in supporting the Lubetkin Field Foundation? Click here.

Thanks to the Lubetkin Field Foundation, this plot of land in Tilcara, Argentina, will soon become the community’s first public soccer field with artificial turf.

College Sports

NIL promises made to recruits, now coaches wait for key decision to learn whether they can keep them

Associated Press LAS VEGAS (AP) — Next week, college football coaches can put the recruiting promises they have made to high school seniors on paper. Then the question becomes whether they can keep them. Uncertainty over a key element of the $2.8 billion NCAA antitrust settlement that is reshaping college sports has placed recruiters on […]

Published

1 minute ago

July 23, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Next week, college football coaches can put the recruiting promises they have made to high school seniors on paper.

Then the question becomes whether they can keep them.

Uncertainty over a key element of the $2.8 billion NCAA antitrust settlement that is reshaping college sports has placed recruiters on a tightrope.

They need clarity about whether the third-party collectives that were closely affiliated with their schools and that ruled name, image, likeness payments over the first four years of the NIL era can be used to exceed the $20.5 million annual cap on what each school can now pay players directly. Or, whether those collectives will simply become a cog in the new system.

Only until that issue is resolved will many coaches know if the offers they’ve made, and that can become official on Aug. 1, will conform to the new rules governing college sports.

“You don’t want to put agreements on the table about things that we might have to claw back,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day explained at this week’s Big Ten media days. “Because that’s not a great look.”

No coach, of course, is going to fess up to making an offer he can’t back up.

“All we can do is be open and honest about what we do know, and be great communicators from that standpoint,” Oregon’s Dan Lanning said.

Aug. 1 is key because it marks the day football programs can start sending written offers for scholarships to high school prospects starting their senior year.

This process essentially replaces what used to be the signing of a national letter of intent. It symbolizes the changes taking hold in a new era in which players aren’t just signing for a scholarship, but for a paycheck, too.

Paying them is not a straightforward business. Among the gray areas comes from guidance issued earlier this month by the newly formed College Sports Commission in charge of enforcing rules involved with paying players, both through the $20.5 million revenue share with schools and through third-party collectives.

The CSC is in charge of clearing all third-party deals worth $600 or more.

It created uncertainty earlier this month when it announced, in essence, that the collectives did not have a “valid business purpose.” if their only reason to exist was ultimately to pay players. Lawyers for the players barked back and said that is what a collective was always met to be, and if it sells a product for a profit, it qualifies as legit.

The parties are working on a compromise, but if they don’t reach one they will take this in front of a judge to decide.

With Aug. 1 coming up fast, oaches are eager to lock in commitments they’ve spent months, sometimes years, locking down from high school recruits.

“Recruiting never shuts off, so we do need clarity as soon as we can,” Buckeyes athletic director Ross Bjork said. “The sooner we can have clarity, the better. I think the term ‘collective’ has obviously taken on a life of its own. But it’s really not what it’s called, it’s what they do.”

In anticipating the future, some schools have disbanded their collectives while others, such as Ohio State, have brought them in-house. It is all a bit of a gamble. If the agreement that comes out of these negotiations doesn’t restrict collectives, they could be viewed as an easy way to get around the salary cap. Either way, schools eyeing ways for players to earn money outside the cap amid reports that big programs have football rosters worth more than $30 million in terms of overall player payments.

“It’s a lot to catch up, and there’s a lot for coaches and administrators to deal with,” Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti said, noting the terms only went into play on July 1. “But I don’t think it’s unusual when you have something this different that there’s going to be some bumps in the road to get to the right place. I think everybody is committed to get there.”

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, whose program tapped into the transfer portal and NIL to make the most remarkable turnaround in college football last season, acknowledged “the landscape is still changing, changing as we speak today.”

“You’ve got to be light on your feet and nimble,” he said. “At some point, hopefully down the road, this thing will settle down and we’ll have clear rules and regulations on how we operate.”

At stake at Oregon is what is widely regarded as a top-10 recruiting class for a team that finished first in the Big Ten and made the College Football Playoff last year along with three other teams from the league.

“It’s an interpretation that has to be figured out, and anytime there’s a new rule, it’s how does that rule adjust, how does it adapt, how does it change what we have to do here,” Lanning said. “But one thing we’ve been able to do here is — what we say we’ll do, we do.”

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

Link

College Sports

Longtime Florissant Valley College soccer coach Sorber dies

Tom Timmermann | Post-Dispatch Pete Sorber, who coached Florissant Valley Community College to 10 national championships in a 30-year career and became a beloved fixture on the local soccer scene, died Wednesday, July 23, 2025. He was 95 and a week away from turning 96. Sorber took over at Flo Valley when Harry Keough left […]

Published

29 minutes ago

July 23, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Longtime Florissant Valley College soccer coach Sorber dies

Tom Timmermann | Post-Dispatch

Pete Sorber, who coached Florissant Valley Community College to 10 national championships in a 30-year career and became a beloved fixture on the local soccer scene, died Wednesday, July 23, 2025. He was 95 and a week away from turning 96.

Sorber took over at Flo Valley when Harry Keough left to become the head coach at St. Louis University in the halcyon days for St. Louis soccer. Keough went on to win five NCAA titles at SLU, but Sorber won twice that many, using a roster built totally on local players to win national championships in 1967, ’69, ’70, ’71, ’73, ’75, ’81, ’84, ’85 and ’89.

Flo Valley also went to the championship game in 1968, giving it a run of five years in the championship game at a level where no player was on the team more than two years. Sorber, who retired in 1997 and became an avid golfer, had a record of 415-85-22 and was named national coach of the year five times.

“He touched everyone, not just in soccer but as a person,” said his son Mike, who had a long playing career that included starting for the United States at the 1994 World Cup before becoming a coach himself, as an assistant with St. Louis University, in Major League Soccer and with the U.S. national team. “He found the best in everyone and brought that out. That was his specialty.”

“Pete taught me how to be a player, a coach, a friend, a father, a husband and a man,” said Matt McVey, who played for and coached with Sorber and is still an assistant at Flo Valley, “and at least 800 other guys like me, just by example. One of first things he said was, it’s not fun if you don’t make it fun.”

In addition to coaching at Flo Valley, Sorber also was an assistant coach with the indoor St. Louis Steamers from 1979 to 1985.

Gene Francis Sorber (as a child, someone called him “Little Pete,” after his father, and the name stuck) was born Aug. 1, 1929. He attended South Side High (now St. Mary’s), didn’t go to college and played only as an amateur in the extensive club system that existed in St. Louis at the time. He served three years in the Navy, then went to work for the Wabash Railroad and as a fireman in the city of St. Louis.

It was while a fireman, working on the snorkel crew out of a firehouse downtown, that he joined Flo Valley. Keough was leaving Flo Valley to take the SLU job and recommended Sorber, who had retired as a player two years before and had been coaching at St. Mary’s, for the job, figuring Sorber could fit that into his fireman’s schedule the same way Keough had juggled coaching and being a mailman.

Sorber had been skeptical of taking the job because of the long commute from his home on the South Side but said yes. The success was immediate, and after two seasons, he was able to quit being a fireman and work full time at Flo Valley, adding the job of gym supervisor.

Some prominent local players moved through Sorber’s program, including Steve Pecher and Denny Vanniger, both of whom went straight from Flo Valley to play in the North American Soccer League (“Without Pete, there’s no Pecher,” McVey said) and later for the U.S. national team. Mike Margulis was playing at Flo Valley when he was selected for the 1972 U.S. Olympic team.

Sorber is survived by his wife of 64 years, Marlene; his son, Mike, currently the coach of St. Louis City SC’s under-16 academy team; and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

History, it has been said, is written by the winners. President Donald Trump is working that lever of power — again.

This time, he’s insisting that Washington’s NFL team change its name from the Commanders back to the Redskins, a name that was considered offensive to Native Americans. Predictably, to Trump’s stated delight, an internet uproar ensued.

It’s a return to the president’s favorite rebranding strategy, one well-used around the world and throughout history. Powers-that-be rename something — a body of water, a mountain in Alaska, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Mumbai, various places in Israel after 1948 — in line with “current” political and cultural views. Using names to tell a leader’s own version of the nation’s story is a perk of power that Trump is far from the first to enjoy.

A name, after all, defines identity and even reality because it is connected to the verb “to be,“ says one brand strategist.

“A parent naming a child, a founder naming a company, a president naming a place … in each example, we can see the relationship of power,” Shannon Murphy, who runs Nameistry, a naming agency that works with companies and entrepreneurs to develop brand identities, said in an email. “Naming gives you control.”

Trump reignited a debate on football and American identity

In Trump’s case, reviving the debate over the Washington football team’s name had the added effect of distraction.

“My statement on the Washington Redskins has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way,” he wrote on his social media platform, adding a threat to derail the team’s deal for a new stadium if it resisted.

In fact, part of the reaction came from people noting that Trump’s proposed renaming came as he struggled to move past a rebellion among his supporters over the administration’s refusal to release much-hyped records in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation. Over about two weeks, Trump had cycled through many tactics — downplaying the issue, blaming others, scolding a reporter, insulting his own supporters, suing the Wall Street Journal and finally authorizing the Justice Department to try to unseal grand jury transcripts.

Trump’s demand that the NFL and the District of Columbia change the team’s name back to a dictionary definition of a slur against Native Americans reignited a brawl in miniature over race, history and the American identity.

Trump’s reelection itself can be seen as a response to the nation’s reckoning with its racial history after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. That year, Americans elected Democratic President Joe Biden, who championed diversity. During his term, Washington’s football team became first the Washington Football Team, then the Commanders, at a widely estimated cost in the tens of millions of dollars. And in 2021, The Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians.

In 2025, Trump has ordered a halt to diversity, equity and inclusion programs through the federal government, universities and schools, despite legal challenges. And he wants the Commanders’ name changed back, though it’s unclear if he has the authority to restrict the nearly $4 billion project.

Is Trump’s ‘Redskins’ push a distraction or a power play?

What’s clear is that names carry great power where business, national identity, race, history and culture intersect.

Trump has had great success for decades branding everything from buildings he named after himself to the Gulf between Mexico, Cuba and the United States to his political opponents and people he simply doesn’t like. Exhibit A: Florida’s governor, dubbed by Trump “Meatball Ron” DeSantis, who challenged him for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

And Trump is not the first leader to use monikers and nicknames — branding, really — to try to define reality and the people who populate it. Naming was a key tool of colonization that modern-day countries are still trying to dislodge. “Naming,” notes one expert, “is never neutral.”

“To name is to collapse infinite complexity into a manageable symbol, and in that compression, whole worlds are won or lost,“ linguist Norazha Paiman wrote last month on Medium.

”When the British renamed places throughout India or Africa, they weren’t just updating maps,” Paiman wrote. “They were restructuring the conceptual frameworks through which people could relate to their own territories.”

This is not Trump’s first rebranding push

Trump’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America is perhaps the best-known result of Executive Order 14172, titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.”

The renaming sent mapmakers, search engines and others into a flurry over whether to change the name. And it set off a legal dispute with The Associated Press over First Amendment freedoms that is still winding through the courts. The news outlet’s access to events in the Oval Office and Air Force One was cut back starting in February after the AP said it would continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its copy, while noting Trump’s wishes that it instead be renamed the Gulf of America.

It’s unclear if Trump’s name will stick universally — or go the way of “freedom fries,” a brief attempt by some in the George W. Bush-era GOP to rebrand french fries after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But there’s evidence that at least for business in some places, the “Gulf of America” terminology has staying power. Chevron’s earnings statements of late have referred to the Gulf of America, because “that’s the position of the U.S. government now,” CEO Mike Wirth said during a Jan. 31 call with investors.

And along the Gulf Coast in Republican Louisiana, leaders of the state’s seafood industry call the body of water the Gulf of America, in part, because putting that slogan on local products might help beat back the influx of foreign shrimp flooding American markets, the Louisiana Illuminator news outlet reported.

Renaming is a bipartisan endeavor

The racial reckoning inspired by Floyd’s killing rippled across the cultural landscape.

Quaker retired the Aunt Jemima brand after it had been served up at America’s breakfast tables for 131 years, saying it recognized that the character’s origins were “based on a racial stereotype.” Eskimo Pies became Edy’s. The Grammy-winning country band Lady Antebellum changed its name to Lady A, saying they were regretful and embarrassed that their former moniker was associated with slavery.

And Trump didn’t start the fight over football. Democratic President Barack Obama, in fact, told The Associated Press in 2013 that he would “think about changing” the name of the Washington Redskins if he owned the team.

Trump soon after posted to Twitter: “President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name-our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not nonsense.”

Fast-forward to July 20, 2025, when Trump posted that the Washington Commanders should change their name back to the Redskins.

“Times,” the president wrote, “are different now.”