Hawaii is a tropical paradise and one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It is also one of the most promising soccer markets in the country. Leading the way from the islands is Oahu League of Hawaii Youth Soccer CEO and President Chris Keem.
Keem is an accomplished soccer executive who has grown the game in both the U.S. and Canada for nearly 20 years. From 2005-2008, he was the Executive Director of Queen City FC, an NPSL side in Buffalo, NY. Queen City was the predecessor to the incredibly successful FC Buffalo organization that still exists in the NPSL today.
“When we started Queen City, we couldn’t get jobs in sports,” Keem said. “We were all in our mid-20s. We basically created our own job. We had ups and downs there, but we learned a lot and how to manage a sport and how to work within a league structure. We finished second in the league in 2007!”
Keem went on to serve as the NPSL’s Director of Membership from 2008-2012, serving on the league’s executive committee that ran day-to-day operations. The next step was north of the border as Keem pushed the game forward in Ontario.
He also served on the sales and technical staff for the Burlington Youth Soccer Club from 2009-2012. Additionally, he was the goalkeeper coach for the U14 Provincial Team at the Ontario Soccer Association from 2011-2012. From there, he moved onto becoming the Soccer and Sport Manager at Rosedale Moore Park Association (Mooredale SC) Community Center, a multi-sport club with 7,500 members, from 2012-2016. He was also a coach with Hamilton United Elite from 2013-2016, in the Ontario Player Development League (OPDL).
Perhaps the milestone of his career was his work as Business Operations Manager with North Mississauga Soccer Club from 2017 to 2019. The club was an important one thanks to a large budget of two million dollars and a historic tradition of success. He was largely responsible for the meteoric rise of the club, helping increase corporate partnership revenue by 55%, grant opportunities by 93%, and League1 Ontario tickets sales by 85%. With the team breaking attendance records each week, culminating in a sellout of their Credit River Cup derby match against Sigma FC which led them to their first ever playoff berth.
This success raised his profile and gave him the opportunity to take on the next big challenge over 4,500 miles away.
“I was lying in bed one day in Toronto and I get the United Soccer Coaches emails, the job alerts,” Keem said. “It just came up and I said, ‘Oh, this job in Hawaii. That would be cool.’ I had been in the soccer industry in management for the last 10 years plus 14 years pretty much in Buffalo and Greater Toronto. And so yeah, why not move to Hawaii do the same thing and to step up, moving from club management up to league management? Yeah, it’s living on the ocean and not living in snow for the first time in my life.”
Keem has been hard at work with his Board of Directors launching programming that will create systemic change in the Hawaiian game.
“We developed some cool strategic initiatives,” Keem said. “And one of those is match analysis. I want to link our players to colleges and pro academies and teams. Videotaping all the 15s and above, and having the videos broken down will help with many things. Coaching development, team development for team film sessions online, creating player highlights for ODP, MLS Academy, and college scouting so we don’t have to rely on flying to 8,000 showcases anymore, referee development, and we can use it for marketing to have goals of the week, saves of the week, and also for discipline which we hope we don’t have to use it for. I think we can cut down on kids spending so much flying around by creating good packages, creating a baseline for our kids to see where they are at, and promote our product. That’s a project that we’re working on to try and make things better here for Spring 2021.”
Keem, who earned experience as a college coach at Salisbury University, State University of New York at Buffalo State, and Canisius College from 2000-2006, is very committed to the development of coaches on the islands.
“From the league perspective, we want to try and get all the coaches together, working on topics throughout the league of different age groups,” Keem said. “From 12’s down on the developmental side, and then 13’s and above, working on the more tactical side of development, and just to continue their education. We have not had a lot of coach education here, and we are working with the state to provide more opportunities. We have a “C” license, more “D” Licenses through U.S. Soccer, a DOC Diploma, and Goalkeeper Diploma through the United Soccer Coaches, all have been postponed due to COVID-19. I think if we have a ‘Coach the Coaches Program’ that knowledge will filter down to the players, we can do more for the players that way. Then we do not have to just rely on the two biggest clubs to do everything because we have 28 clubs here. We can pick up a lot of that slack, strengthen numbers, develop more coaches, develop our players, and we continue with that Top Drawer Soccer article, we continue with that per capita rate of players that are moving on.”
The Oahu League boasts 4,500 to 5,000 players from the age of 6 to 19. The league makes up 94-96% of the Hawaii Youth Soccer Association registrations. But its size is not the only advantage.
“We’ve got some advantages that only maybe California, Florida, and a few other places can boast,” Keem said. “We can play soccer 365-days outside. We do run futsal as well, but unlike most of the North America, the indoor version of the game is much more expensive than the outdoor version of the game. We are still developing strategies for that, looking at street soccer events, esports, and other things to engage our membership.”
Big clubs with a long history of success are yet another advantage.
“What’s happening is we’ve got some really good clubs here,” Keem said. “Honolulu Bulls have done well in promoting players and developing players. They’ve won two national championships, the only club in the in the state to ever win national championships. We have got a couple big franchise clubs in Rush and Surf. They helped develop a lot of coaches and a lot of players. A lot of the players are coming through them from what I’ve seen.”
“I’m working with the clubs (of any size) as best I can to help develop coaches to help continue that pathway for the players,” Keem said. “I’m also in the process of creating webinars on the development of their businesses, with about 20 of them, in four topics right now – governance, marketing management, technical oversight and evaluation, and staff and volunteer leadership.”
Hawaii’s schedule is quite different than what we see in other parts of the country. “We have three seasons for the kids 13 and down. We have two seasons for the 13s and above. They get to play outdoor soccer often, the high school season is quite serious here as well. So, they get to play soccer a lot.”
“Pretty much we have an opening season, which is more of a ‘scrimmage season,’ in the fall,” Keem said. “Then the high school is October through end of February. And then our league starts up again at the first week of March and goes to the end of May. This year could go to the end of June. Hopefully we can get it in. We’ll see.”
Challenges to the game in Hawaii involve misguided perceptions and the temptations of other sports.
“But before the TopDrawerSoccer article came out, everyone seemed to think soccer was nothing here,” Keem said. “They never thought any kids could make the next level and I’d sit there and think well, these kids are there. These kids are at the next level, these kids are at the level beyond that. So why do you think what we are doing is not working? It is growing, especially on the girls’ side. For the boys’ side, it’s big with the younger ages, and then football comes around, and we have a lot of football players in NCAA Division One and the NFL. So, they see that, that is where they want to go. We cannot help that, there’s money there. Baseball is another sport that can be played out outdoors all year. It’s pretty big here as well.”
The length of seasons has also turned out to be very problematic.
“The main challenge is I think and is U.S. Soccer’s main challenge,” Keem said. “Now that I have done the apprenticeship over in Germany and in Holland and then lived in Canada for the last 14 years, you need a longer season. Our seasons are eight to 10 weeks long. I think that is a U.S. Soccer problem. I do not think that that is a Hawaii only problem. But I remember growing up our seasons were that long. You need to train more. The DA corrected that getting clubs to take that aspect more seriously. Look at the players we now have at pro clubs that have gone through the DA system. A lot more than ever.”
Being on an island means there is little land for development of new athletic facilities.
“We all share the same facility,” Keem said. “We’ve got a beautiful facility. 23 fields with a 5,000 to 10,000 seat soccer stadium. It’s beautiful.”
Further growth of the beautiful game in Hawaii is possible but could be held back by the current pandemic that is affecting the entire world. The economic effects could be even more serious on the islands.
“Our economy is not doing well here in Hawaii,” Keem said. “Military and tourism are the economic drivers of the islands. So only one of those two is really standing right now. Who knows what is going to happen? All the hotels are shut, all the beaches are shut, the airlines. We were getting 30,000 people a day. They are getting like 100 people in a day now. It’s going to be tough, as a lot of people are laid off right now and we may see our clubs going to be down 15 to 20% in registrations next year. A lot of those clubs might be struggling.”
Despite the economic issues, there’s still massive potential in Hawaii beyond the youth game.
“The adult league is pretty large as well,” Keem said. “It seems to be pretty popular. I think between the islands, we could have like our own semi-pro type league. That would be one of my main goals here. Granted my organization is just a youth league, but I know our adult league does well. I think they could step it up to the next level, you know, have at least a six-team league here in Oahu and use the high school stadiums and sell tickets and do all of that, that would be great. Between Maui and the Big Island and Kauai, maybe they have a team each. If you do it right, and market it right, you could start to draw. What I see from our youth clubs here, I would love to move to a club-to club scheduling model, and then kind of build it up from there. Ideally, long-term, we start building senior teams out of them as most already have the senior teams. But if you have Bulls vs. Rush Day, and all those teams are playing each other. Then at night, it is capped off with the senior teams playing each other in the stadium, that would be kind of cool. We have stadiums all over the island that could be utilized when and if a senior semi-pro league would start.”
Keem is about introducing new ideas and growing the game. And that is the kind of leader that is needed in Hawaii. He knows how to navigate the highs and lows, the positives and negatives on the way to growth and development. Keep an eye on the islands as Keem will be taking the Hawaiian game to new heights.
