By Dagmar Reinhard

In early August 2016, Roger Bonet arrived in Bahía Uvita straight from Barcelona.

This 29-year-old man, with a degree in Physical Education and Sports Sciences from UB (Universitat de Barcelona), embarked on an adventure in Costa Rica with his partner, a private school teacher in Costa Ballena. When he finally settled here, this young Catalonian shared his plan to start a Futsal promising future project for young people, thanks to his great experience on the field as a player for F.C. Barcelona and his 12 years as a coach.

The first step was to create an extracurricular activity for a private school, which now has two groups divided based on age. Then came the possibility to work together with Costa Ballena Futsal, a female team that was founded in 2014 but moved to San Isidro due to lack of local support. After setting an agreement with the administrators of the female team, Roger was in charge of creating and managing the men’s team.

By February the project had already started with training sessions and the objective to register teams in national tournaments. Costa Ballena Men’s Futsal currently has both an Under-15 and a Senior team that plays all over the country. The players are exclusively from Bahía and Uvita, and their ages range from 11 to 27 years old. To make this happen, besides constantly finding sponsors, players and their families organize activities to raise money to afford the high cost of competing.

Another group of minor leaguers trains once a week to ensure the existence of the project, and also to encourage kids to start practicing sports. Thanks to this initiative, 50 young people from our community, between 7 and 27 years old, enjoy the physical and social benefits of participating in this team sport.