If you are Rodney Irizarry, you jump on the next plane north.

“Our family is used to getting on airplanes and traveling for youth soccer,” said 71-year-old Rodney, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. “This was nothing new, and I knew the call was coming,”

He has been in the Houghton area for the last several weeks helping his son, Brian, launch the inaugural season for Houghton FC (football club).

Brian began Houghton FC earlier in the year with a mission of providing a foundation for area youth to play top-level soccer. Practices and games for the opening eight-week season began on July 12 in Hurontown.

Eddie O’Neill/Daily Mining Gazette Rodney Irizarry hands out soccer pinnies to players last week. The 71-year-old coach was in the Houghton area helping his son, Brian begin opeing week of practices for the Houghton FC.

“In particular, I hope we are a training ground or foundation for the Finlandia and Michigan Tech soccer programs,” he said. “As well, when you form a sanctioned (soccer) club, it makes you eligible to compete against other clubs who are members of the Michigan State Youth Soccer Association (MSYSA).”

Brian, who is teaching Spanish at the TRIO Upward Bound program at Finlandia this summer, said he wasn’t sure what kind of numbers he would have in regards to players when registration opened up in the spring. Kids as young as 3 and as old as 18 could sign up for a team with a recreational or select-level of play at a number of age groups.

“I was hoping to get at least 100 kids as that allows you to participate in MSYSA tournaments,” he said. “I was obviously then quite pleased when it became 333 kids.”

Rodney is no stranger to the game of soccer. He was a standout-high-school player in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, back in his youth, and, even more impressively, he was a walk-on starter at North Carolina State University in the late 1970s.

“I went to NC State on a fencing scholarship, but I made the soccer team there as well and fenced and started on the varsity (soccer) squad all four years,” he said. “Fencing was my passion. There was a time when I had my eyes set on making the 1984 USA Olympic (fencing) Team. However, I got married and had kids. Both my boys are 100 times better at soccer than me because they started much earlier.”

Rodney began coaching his boys when Brian was six. Both Brian and his brother Danny played on a variety of club youth teams while growing up in Georgia.

“Brian’s team won the Georgia state championship four years in a row,” Rodney recalled.

Brian would go on to serve in the Marines and meet his wife Barbara, a U.P. native and a teacher for the U.S. Department of Defense, while in Japan. With three boys in tow ready to start school, they settled in the Houghton area several years ago. Brian got to work mapping out his soccer field of dreams.

“Its always been Brian’s dream to start a (soccer) club from his own experiences as a youth soccer player, and he played in Germany and coached at Georgia for awhile,” said Rodney.

He added the one of his chief jobs since landing in Houghton has been watering and prepping a brand-new, official-size soccer field that Brian had constructed from scratch in the side of an abandoned lot.

“We are calling it stadium field, and I’ve been lugging the hose around that darn thing all week,” said Rodney. “It’s almost ready.”

Brian said not only has his dad’s groundskeeping help been great but so has his time with the kids and coaches.

“His knowledge of the game has been super helpful for our coaches,” said Brian. “He just has a tremendous amount of (soccer) knowledge on and off the field. He has gotten our big field in top shape with water. I couldn’t have done this without him.”

However, both father and son agreed that is just the way they Irizarry family operates.

“We are a soccer family,” explained Brian. “We eat, drink, and sleep it. So it means a lot to both of us to get this thing off the ground and to make sure the people of this area who love to play soccer have something special to play on.”