AFC Columbia

Welcome to another interview by LowerLeagueUSA. Periodically we like to interview different people and clubs around the country to get an inside look of how these clubs survive, and grow. I have been honored to have conversations with many brilliant minds, as well as those passionate about the game, and today I got another opportunity to do that, by speaking with Zach Fisher, one of the people behind AFC Columbia!

Hello Zach,

Thank you for giving me the time and opportunity to highlight your club, and work on and off the pitch, without any further delay, lets get started!

Can you give a brief intro to who you are and your background in the beautiful game?

I had a very unorthodox entry into the soccer scene. My high school didn’t have soccer and at that time soccer wasn’t very popular in Northern Indiana. It was when I was in the Marines that I first got interested in the game. I was stationed in DC and at that time DC United was playing at RFK. [Because of] the sheer size of the stadium the club would liberally give out tickets to service members and I ended up having a great time at a few games. I’ve been a follower of the club ever since! When I was in college afterwards a lot of my friends played soccer and I would learn from them some of the rules and some of the European teams. My roommate in the Marines was a Chelsea supporter so I just followed them because I knew a few things about them already. It was when I was at UWF that I got introduced to lower league soccer. The women’s coach had a lot of players playing in the WPSL, the local club at the time was in the GCPL and the men’s coach was the head coach at Chattanooga FC. They really gave me an inside look at a part of soccer I had no concept of and really got me hooked. 

What’s the process like starting a club in the lower leagues?

Very difficult and very easy at the same time if that makes any sense. It is easy to get a logo and apply to a league and do all of that. It can be very difficult to convince people to spend hundreds of hours on a non-profit for the love of the game. Very few clubs, if any make money, so it’s a labor of love. I have learned a lot about the logistics of outfitting teams, merchandising, and general price points in soccer. Thankfully we came into this with general background info from people/clubs like Andy Hayes with Old Bhoys, MPLS City, Kingston Stockade, etc. The MWPL as well with John Hall, Ben Rhode, Ivaldo, Steve Beckman, and others [who] are very transparent on their best practices. I can’t speak highly enough [about] how the league is an open source for wanting to improve. We look at clubs like Edgewater, Chicago House, Bavarians, and others for examples of marketing, community engagement, and general best practices. 

Why start a club in Columbia, MO? What other names did you consider before deciding on AFC Columbia?

I moved to Columbia in 2019 with just an expectation to support the local club, not expecting to start one. When I realized there wasn’t one, I connected with a few interested locals and it evolved into starting a grassroots club. It took a few months to get organized and get going right as the pandemic hit. As for the name we didn’t want a United, or just an FC, or anything too generic per se. Sunderland Til’ I Die was popular at the time as well and they are Sunderland AFC in long form. So we flipped the ending to become AFC Columbia, made sure the name was available on all social channels and went with it.

How were you able to find locals who were interested in this project as well? 

The club actually started with a Twitter exchange with a local Grant Sundberg. The two of us started it at awful timing though. The pandemic really hurt recruiting. The easiest way to find other local fans was to find those who followed local soccer accounts and pick up soccer. We just reached out and asked for interest. That led to Matt Frappier our tech guru joining and Anthony Kristensen who helped out with our early PR efforts. Those guys along with Elijah Kornberg (who is now in the US Navy) and Brandon Rettke (now with STL City) are considered the OGs if you will. It took a small village to get it going and we are well set up now to move forward thanks to their efforts in those early days. 

In 2021 you joined the CPISL (a local league), what made you look for a more regional league?

Timing is really the only reason we played [in the] local league. With the pandemic shutting everything down, we knew local business support would be hard to financially make it feasible to launch regionally. We also wanted to show that we were becoming a real club and putting together a local team was important. It wasn’t about winning or recruiting all the best players, it was about getting things into motion for our next step. We have always had the mindset of building a sustainable regional team. 

You took your time researching league options before deciding to join the MWPL, what went behind that decision? With the plethora of leagues around your area as options, what stood out most about the MWPL?

Sustainability is first and foremost why we chose the MPWL. Reading time and time again how national league clubs were losing money and then looking at the yearly fees those leagues were charging simply to play soccer didn’t make any sense to me.  We don’t have a rich benefactor paying for anything and we charge as little as possible to our players to compete. We would rather spend our money improving our gameday and improving our experience than sending to a national office to spend on their staffing. The very concept of a national playoff is also asinine to me. No one outside of those leagues seems to care who wins that league championship let alone who wins the other four or five “national” championships. To add on, why would I want to bankrupt my club on potential travel for a game few people outside of our players would care about? Lessons don’t seem to be learned very quickly in lower league soccer, but that is the most glaringly obvious waste of money in the sport. With that said, some clubs do an outstanding job of getting thousands in the door and those environments are awesome to look at on social media, but those are the exception to the rule, not the norm.  

As we all are aware, lower league soccer around the country is difficult to sustain. What makes it hard to continuously field a team? 

There is never a shortage of players, it’s more of a struggle to keep people engaged on the volunteer front. With no unified pyramid there isn’t much for a club to build towards [the] long term. If you do great, congrats you stay at the same level. If you do poorly, congrats you stay at the same level. People only want to do that so many times before wanting to do something different. Can’t blame them really. The goal is [to] find those people [who] love soccer and want to do it for a long time and want to help gradually build something awesome.

How do you plan on keeping AFC Columbia around for a long time?

There is a lot of local interest in soccer and the key to long-term survival is getting the community engaged with the club to increase the amount of people involved in the day-to-day with AFCC. Ideally, we can reach a point where there are 20 or so people engaged yearly and the operations can sustain a few dropouts each year. To get to that, we need to show value to our community, bring an awesome game day environment, and be competitive on the field. If we can do those things, AFCC will be around for a long time.

From the outside looking in, the most sustainable clubs are those that are ingrained in their communities. How active is AFC Columbia within the community?

We are connected with all of the local youth clubs and offer our support in terms of extra coaches, referees, etc. We also have tried to do fundraising for local youth soccer scholarships. Community involvement is high on our list and the more we grow operationally the more we can get involved. For example, we had 10 or so people volunteering at a local 5k race in the summer. The club contracts so much in the offseason it is hard to get that same level of support in the off-season. I would love to be able to offer that in the holidays and make a difference more year-round. I say that knowing that we did volunteer with gift wrapping last Christmas to help raise money for Relay for Life. It’s definitely an area we look to do as much as we can. 

Another way lower league clubs survive is marketing. What have you found to be the best form of marketing for your club? 

Social Media and word of mouth by far. Our top priority staffing wise is finding someone to do that as their primary role at the club because of how important it is. Consistently being visible on social media, encouraging interactions, and engaging with the local community is paramount. From the build-up to the season all the way through the last game, to the off-season, the importance is very high. The past 2 seasons I have mostly done that and it’s difficult to handle on top of other duties, but it has to get done. We hope by prioritizing even more this off-season we can generate more excitement, attract larger crowds, and get more visibility locally. Word of mouth is starting to get there. More and more we see AFC gear in the community, or when you bring up the club in conversation the odds of that person knowing at least of the club is getting likelier by the day. 

What are your short and long term goals for AFC Columbia?

I look at goals as either internal or external. As for internal, I want to get the club at a higher level of support for our players. I would like to find partners for tracking vests from a health safety standpoint. We also want to get better training/game film usage, performance tracking, and other technical additions. We also want to travel a little more comfortably and help provide additional comfort options on the road. Externally we would like to add to our staffing to allow more depth to our marketing outreach. We have a pretty good game environment already, but we want to become THE sports thing to do in the summer. We want to get more engaged with an emerging supporters group and possibly even add some hospitality at our games. Long term I would like to be able to internally control our own facility. Having our own facility outside of the obvious scheduling benefits comes with a lot more avenues to generate revenue. A lot of clubs lose money on home games when in reality we should be striving to pay for our seasons through gate revenue. This is the biggest hurdle in my opinion, in lower league soccer. Externally long term I would like to get to a point where we are well known locally, able to generate crowds over 750 a game, and create one of the best home environments at this level. There is a certain level of sustainability that comes with 500+ crowds and getting there is one of our biggest long term goals. 

When recruiting players, how important is it for them to have local ties?

Inspired in part by Atletico Bilbao we only allow players that have met one of our criteria. Either a) they are from Columbia (or Mid-Missouri) originally or live here full time now, b) attended a local high school, or c) attended a local college, only then are they eligible. Only 2 players have not met those guidelines and exceptions were allowed for those 2 for their individual reasons that somewhat met the criteria, but not fully. So to answer your question, we take our local-only approach very seriously!

The club was only founded in early 2020, what has been your proudest moment, and most difficult moment in the almost 4 years of existence?

The proudest moment for me is probably an odd one in terms of it was on the field, but not [in] a league game. We beat SESA [in 2022] in a friendly 8-0 to end the season and it was just a great bow on the end of our first year. We didn’t lose any money, the players had fun in a no-pressure end-of-season game and it was just nice to sit and enjoy a game. [When] you think about what it will look like when you start a club and see its first season be successful it was a proud moment. The most difficult is definitely not beating Ajax these past 2 years. Tip of the cap to them, they are an outstanding team, I just feel we have had the better team and for whatever reason can’t seem to win those games. I think our two clubs are both destined for bigger things and I look forward to more I-70 Cups with them in the future! We get along off the field, which honestly makes losing worse haha.

Last year you announced the women’s side of your club, joining the WPSL. What were some of the big similarities and differences in starting a women’s club vs a men’s club?

The women’s launch was always the goal from the outset. Along with the men, the women have never had a team here locally to call their own. They were both similar in terms of launch, though we had taken some lessons learned from the men to apply to the women. The biggest difference is the makeup of the competition. The men do not play any large youth clubs that have an adult side. The women do. The two biggest clubs in Missouri have teams in our WPSL conference and one has a large affiliate in KC as well. The resources those clubs have will always be a challenge for us to overcome and it’s an uphill battle. We felt like we as a club needed to partner with a group in Jeff City to help with getting us to that next level on the women’s side. Not only will the umbrella of our club expand, the women will be getting their own branding to help differentiate themselves, and we will be adding the regionality of having club members from both the city of Columbia and Jefferson City. Our manpower and resources were stretched thin last season and this merger made complete sense for our women’s program. I’m excited to see that program reenergized and competitive in year two.

Is there a lower league club you look at as motivation for your club’s growth? What stands out about them?

I wouldn’t say one specific club, but a group of 4 to 6. Steel City does a great job of getting butts in seats and they are very outgoing in their approach to their club. Dekalb County and the group up there have been an invaluable sounding board and role model for clubs to follow. Dekalb has consistently grown each year and I can’t wait to see what they will become in 10+ seasons. Lansing Common of course in their community outreach, Edgewater always seems to be looking for that next best practice and motivates us to keep up with the group. Minneapolis City with their futures program and merch strategies. I could probably list a few more, Temecula, Asheville City, Ballard, Annapolis, Appalachian, and even the guys at Queen City in Cincy to name just a small segment of the clubs we interact with or see doing awesome initiatives. The amount of clubs doing awesome things keeps this fun and engaging. We love that clubs locally like Ajax and Club Atletico Saint Louis keep the level of play high and the competitiveness pushes our players each time we play.

The more people I interview, the more I understand how little time people behind the scenes of these clubs really have, so for that, I am grateful you were willing to give me some of that precious time highlighting your journey as well as your club. I want to wish AFC Columbia, as well as yourself, longevity and success on and off the pitch.

If anyone is interested in getting involved with AFCC, they can reach the club on social media or online at afccomo.com.

Please make sure to follow AFC Columbia, the Midwest Premier League, and LowerLeagueUSA on social media. You can find the links below.