Our Spooktacular event is a series of scrimmages, skills contests, costume contests, and fun games that run to find out who is the spookiest of them all! Requested donations is $10-15 per player, with funds raised largely going to field and food costs as well as provided equipment. Because of the duration of the event, it's reliance on city fields, and the cost of providing food, drinks, candy, and other assorted goodies, as an event it can run upwards of $400-700 to provide Spooktacular to our community.
Transitioning into the rainy months in Seattle can be a challenge for some; add to that the complexity of being queer, a shift towards commercialized holiday seasons, and the equating of travel and family can create a lot of mixed emotions for many of us. The purpose of the event is to build a strong queer community through the fall and winter months here in the Seattle area with some levity and joy. For many it’s a final “hurrah!” of soccer before they settle in for the cozy months ahead and opt to return to soccer when warmer weather prevails. For others its a celebration of colder months to come and many more weeks of Kickabout to keep them warm and chase away the gloomies.
In late 2021 Rain City Soccer Club’s board opted to revitalize our Kickabout program. The program (like many other businesses in the Seattle area) was struggling in a post-pandemic world and the board hoped the program could reach people and build community in a way that allowed members to form good bonds and healthy interactions with peers. By mid-2022 the program was growing steadily but the question remained: should Kickabout run year-long, and what would attendance be like in the fall/winter months, especially on and around major holidays? The board opted to update the program to a 52-weeks a year model and deliberate hosting on holiday weekends with the following message:
"A holiday weekend is upon us, and for some in the club that means a longer weekend, perhaps spent with friends and/or family or traveling or vacations. We realize such opportunities aren’t always available to everyone, and that RCSC is incredibly fortunate to be such a diverse group, made up of wonderful people from all different backgrounds who may not share or celebrate the same holidays. It’s true, holiday weekends usually have a lower turn out for us, we consider this a good thing, but Kickabouts are about building a community, and will be held for those who are home and decide they want a chance for some soccer and friendly faces. If a little Sunday scrimmage sounds like just the thing for you, we look forward to seeing you! As always, it is a pleasure to be able to offer such events."
The holiday portion of the program exploded, in fact Spooktacular drew a record 80 attendees - many players credited RCSC for making sure to offer events on days where some in the club had nowhere to go as a way to lighten spirits on the holidays and strengthen community. Spooktacular Halloween is an excellent way for the club to give back and centralize it’s members’ needs during the months when some people need it most.
Nowhere was this more evident for us than Christmas Day of 2022: Seattle received 3″ of fresh snow and ice overnight; worried we might have to cancel Kickabout, leaders showed up at 9am to assess the field, and found a dozen regular attendees of the program pitching in and using shovels, cardboard boxes, and anything they could find to clear the soccer field so Kickabout could continue. This is such a humbling but powerful representation of what “making community” means: even in frigid temperatures, on a holiday weekend, early in the morning, people will pitch in and do whatever it takes not to miss one week of community building. It is with this spirit and these souls in mind that we offer Spooktacular Halloween as an event. If we build it, people will come.
