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Jordan P. Hickey | Longreads | April 21, 2026 | 5,415 words (20 minutes)
I came home so I can feel like this
Take a chance in a place that my parents miss
Will rise with the tides and then we’ll reminisce
I came home so I can feel like this.
—“Homecoming,” MARK Harmony
Fall nights during football season, Jarrell Williams Bulldog Stadium in northwest Arkansas, the home of the Springdale High School Bulldogs, is a living place. A roaring crowd, a lively marching band, an electronic scoreboard casting the field in red LED light. Even when the stands are empty, though, the energy is palpable. The stadium is a hub for this Springdale community—one with a gravity all of its own, the kind of place to which the stars in the sky might lead you if you were looking for home.
It seemed only natural, then, that a particular group of young men were drawn here, one late afternoon as the sun beat down and cicadas whirred, to play a different game on this field under these lights.
On August 9, 2025, just days after the last whistle blew at the Bulldogs’ summer football camp, a charter bus parked in the lot of the stadium and opened its doors. A visiting team stepped down and walked to the field. A few of them could have passed for high-school age; most appeared older than 17, while a few others looked to be in their mid to late 30s. They unshouldered their bags on the metal benches along the sidelines, laying claim to the surrounding astroturf with their soccer balls and water bottles. Ditching their street shoes, they laced up their cleats and formed lines in never-worn practice kits: blue shorts and white shirts. Moments before they started drills, one of the players, Matt John, ran along the side of the field.
“This is a special team, man,” he said, without breaking stride. “It’s a special team.”
It was indeed. Aside from Matt, none of these players were from Springdale. Half the team had flown in from places like Virginia and Washington and Pennsylvania. The others had made significantly longer journeys, traveling nearly 6,300 miles over two full days from map-dot islands in the Pacific Ocean. Much of the coaching staff had flown in from the UK.
A passerby peering through the bars of the metal fence would not have thought much of this scene—just another soccer team practicing at a high-school stadium—but had they zoomed in on the intricate blue logos on the breasts of the players’ jerseys, they would have realized the oddity of the team’s presence: This was the Marshall Islands men’s national soccer team. Had the spectator stuck around to watch a few drills, they would have also noticed that these young men, despite their matching uniforms, clearly did not know one another.
“You stay, you stay, you stay!” shouted one player during a high-speed drill, pointing his finger at another line. Pointing at another teammate, he said, “You’re good.”
“I don’t know your name!” another player exclaimed in a different line. Gesturing to a teammate across the divide, he shouted, “Come back!” Then, as another player advanced, he said, “No, you stay.”
Among the handful of people watching this unfold from the sidelines was Scott Hill, a board member of the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation (MISF), who’d made the 35-hour journey with seven players from Kwajalein Atoll and another three from the capital, Majuro—two of whom were his sons, Ben and Zach.
As the team finished drills and began to scrimmage on a 20-yard block of the field, Hill pointed out different players, describing their far-flung origins. Some had been born and raised on the islands—Jaya Corder, who is Marshallese, lived on Kwajalein but was about to start classes at Arizona State University. Others had lived on the islands long enough to qualify for the team. “[Danny Razook] was mostly there throughout his school age,” Hill said, “and then left and then came back recently with an entire family.” Still others were ethnically Marshallese but had never lived there—or even visited, for that matter.
A significant number of players appeared to be white. Hill noted that they were aware of this and hoped to bring more players from the islands. “In your heart of hearts, you want it to be predominantly from that nation,” he said, adding that the practice of countries recruiting players with tenuous roots was fairly common for teams on the international stage. This was a first step. “You have to start from somewhere,” Hill said.
Matt John was right: This team was special. The Marshall Islands had never fielded a national soccer team.
In the months leading up to this moment, a few tentative steps had been taken. Over Instagram and WhatsApp, group chats had formed, DMs had been exchanged. The players, recruited over the past several months from all over the world, discussed their training schedules, their shoe preferences, and the sheer wonder of knowing they would soon represent their home country. In the days ahead, everything they did—from the drills and scrimmages at the stadium to the downtime hours of communal meals and ping-pong—built on the cornerstone of that shared intention and purpose.
All of this, as Hill said, would take time. But there was one complicating factor, a twist that could have been lifted straight from the tropes of reality television: The nascent bonds the team was working so hard to develop and strengthen would face a very real challenge in less than a week. Ready or not, on August 14, they would take this very field against the US Virgin Islands in the Outrigger Challenge Cup. Two days later, they would face off against a squad from Turks and Caicos.
As practice drew to a close and the Arkansas sun descended over the stands, the high-beam stadium lights powered on to illuminate the field. The coaches gathered the players into a large semicircle on the 30-yard line. Head Coach Lloyd Owers, a white British man from Oxfordshire, gave a few remarks, saying that he was glad to see them all in one place, and that tomorrow’s morning practice had been rescheduled so the players could attend church.
Assistant Coach Dean Johnson, originally from Watford, England, addressed the team, acknowledging the challenge that lay ahead. “This is the first time you guys have ever been together, and the first time is always the hardest,” he told them. “You’ve all been in a Marshall Islands national team training practice, officially. . . . You don’t have to worry about that anymore. You are already national team players.”
His words seemed to lift a great weight, giving the team permission to breathe. Still, a thought lingered as they packed their belongings and left the field. Matt John was right: This team was special. The Marshall Islands had never fielded a national soccer team. With this 11-a-side tournament, these young men would be the first to carry their nation onto an international stage. It seemed fitting that it would happen here in Springdale, home to the largest population of Marshallese anywhere outside the islands.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands, or RMI, is situated roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia and comprises 29 atolls, five islands, and 1,151 inlets, spread across 750,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean. In December 2020, a man named Shem Livai, who was born and raised on Ebeye Island, founded the MISF to give his son and other youth opportunities to play soccer. The New York Times first wrote about the foundation’s effort to bring the world’s game to the island nation, but it wasn’t until early 2023, after a segment on BBC Breakfast, that the world really started to take notice.
“Welcome to football’s final frontier,” a voiceover began. An image of a kidney-shaped tropical island filled the frame, replaced moments later with a spinning 3D globe. Panning first over Australia and New Zealand, the camera’s eye then cut northeast, heading out into open water until a small cluster of land masses resolved into focus. These, the reporter said, “slapbang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” are the Marshall Islands. “Out of 195 nations on earth, they are the last without a football team.”
Similar to the news stories in the months that followed, the story cast a spotlight on the nuclear legacy of the islands (between 1946 and 1958, the US had detonated 67 nuclear and thermonuclear bombs in the northwestern atolls) and the threats posed by climate change (rising sea levels will likely render many of the atolls uninhabitable beginning in the 2030s). And it posed an important question:
How on earth do you go about starting a football organization in a place that has never had one before?
After all, the challenges were legion: For starters, there was a lack of soccer infrastructure and the increasingly well-publicized lack of real estate on which to build it. (The Majuro Track and Field Stadium had been approved in 2019 under the condition that it double as a seawall for the capital, where half the population lives.) There was also, notably, the lack of soccer programming on any level, which meant the normal pipelines that would contribute to elite-level players were all but nonexistent. Although the US military had maintained a presence on Kwajalein Atoll dating back to the 1940s, sports like basketball and volleyball had been the favorites—though Hill noted that it wasn’t unheard of to see 9-on-9 games played on base.
This was to say nothing of the numerous logistical hurdles that an organization would need to contend with before setting its sights on the grand stage of a World Cup appearance (the current goal is to become FIFA members by 2030). For starters, the team would first need to join a local confederation—likely, the Oceania Football Confederation.
And yet, despite all of this, public enthusiasm for a Marshall Islands team had been overwhelming. Owers, who signed on to coach in December 2022, heard from people all over the world asking how they could be part of the program. Players with Marshallese ties looking for their shot at the national team sent videos of their speed and prowess. Others had no ties at all and simply wanted to lend their expertise to usher the program forward. All of them were excited about what this new sport could mean for the future of the nation.
Within months of the BBC feature, that future began taking shape. In summer 2023, Owers traveled to the Marshall Islands for the first time to develop a coaching course and to meet with the Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Education to develop a national curriculum. In 2024, MISF hosted the inaugural Outrigger Challenge Cup in Majuro, a tournament featuring squads from Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia. Eventually, the federation began hosting soccer camps, developed a women’s program, and started to create ties with the diaspora overseas, culminating with the Outrigger Challenge Cup in August 2025.
“People are now realizing that the world wants to help,” Owers told the BBC interviewer. “They want to be part of it and they want to see where it can take them. And ultimately, they do want to be part of the worldwide stage.”
The next evening, as the team’s second practice was underway, Coach Johnson observed from the sidelines. “I would say they’re still a little bit nervous, but still better than yesterday—a little bit more relaxed and calmer on the ball,” he said. “Even communication-side, they’re starting to talk to each other a bit more, which is great.”
Woody Watson, the MISF’s vice president of North American operations, stood beside him watching over the field. “It feels like they can string a ball together and actually go through and see a play develop from the back going forward,” he said.
There’s something remarkable about seeing the beginning of a team like this—to witness their first steps down a path, long before they’re ready for competition, and also to sense, from the sidelines, the weight of being watched. Here was a team learning how to move in this space together, relying on the coaching staff for direction. It was fitting, then, to think back on something that Scott Hill had said the night before. He’d brought traditional stick charts from the Marshall Islands to give as gifts to the players, specifically the rebbelib, which mapped a zoomed-out version of the eastern and western atoll and island chains.
For thousands of years, ri-metos—Marshallese for “people of the sea”—read the waves, relying exclusively on sight and touch to navigate the miles upon miles of rolling ocean around their islands. By placing one hand in the water and feeling its currents, they knew where they were. And as they did so, they relied on their memories of the charts: coconut midribs and seashells arranged to represent ocean swells, currents, and the islands themselves. They offered direction for the people navigating the waters, but still required careful interpretation.
Watching the players on that second day of practice, you could see the progress that Watson noted, but also hints of something more. As the players sprinted across the field, judging the physical distance between themselves and their teammates, they were reading the space, reading one another, developing their own sort of wayfinding.
“This sport is weird,” Coach Johnson said. “It takes more time than people think. They’re progressing—but it’d be nice to have a week.”
There’s something remarkable about seeing the beginning of a team like this—to witness their first steps down a path, long before they’re ready for competition, and also to sense, from the sidelines, the weight of being watched.
Despite playing under the same blue, white, and orange flag, there were subtler divisions the team needed to overcome. Many of the players hailing from the Marshall Islands had only ever played futsal. While it’s very similar to soccer, futsal—a portmanteau or futbol and sala—is played on a much smaller scale, with five players per side on a basketball-sized court. During both the first and second practices, players and coaches alike urged caution—they could not play with the same intensity at Jarrell Williams Bulldog Stadium, on a field that was nearly 10 times the space they were used to.
Other challenges were harder to pin down. As he darted across the field during a scrimmage, Matt John, the lone Springdale resident, was already making a running list of things to do better the next time—the way he’d trained in the months leading up to this moment, the way he’d shed weight and what he’d prioritized during his self-imposed three-a-day practices. There was also the matter of his cleats: During the first practice, he’d worn firm ground cleats when he needed artificial ground cleats. He’d never slipped, but he’d given himself blisters and, on top of that, now needed to break in a new set of shoes. But if there was anything stoking the maelstrom of his nerves, it was knowing that the now-empty stands would be full in a few days.
When it comes time to gaze into the stands, Matt’s eyes will catch on familiar faces—people who know, as he does, what it means to have made this journey, to see this team on this field. After all, Springdale was his hometown. This was where he’d moved with his mother and sister just over a decade ago and where he was welcomed into a sprawling extended family. Here, he’d begun to learn about his homeland and the ancestors who came before him, and where he started to understand what it meant to be Marshallese. He knew that he wanted to do right by all the people who showed up for him, and this team, time and again. This is where he was loved. This was his community.
In Marshallese, the islands are called Aelon̄ Kein Ad—our ocean, our sky, our land—a name that makes it impossible to separate people from place. For those in the Marshallese diaspora, that place now spans the Pacific; across the United States, especially in northwest Arkansas, the Pacific Northwest, and Hawai‘i; and in smaller communities elsewhere. You could say that what holds this scattered geography together is manit, a Marshallese word loosely defined as “culture.” Culture not as costume or tradition as artifact, but an understanding of who you are, how you honor and carry your ancestors, and how you treat yourself, the earth, and each other. For Marshallese people finding their place in the world, manit is the balance that keeps the canoe steady—a sort of inner compass that helps one honor their heritage while they navigate a future far from the islands.
For the thousands who have migrated to Arkansas, including Matt John, that future is in Springdale, where the Marshallese make up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the total population—a figure advocates say the US Census routinely undercounts. On its face, landlocked Springdale was an odd place to hold such a distinction. A one-time sundown town that barred minorities with threats of violence, the northwest Arkansas community had been almost exclusively white for much of its history. Between 1990 and 2000, however, driven in large part by the growing meatpacking industry, the non-white population had soared 280 percent. Although much of this influx was from the Hispanic community, the Marshallese had seen a comparable trajectory as well, growing 294 percent between 2000 and 2010. In 2009, the RMI opened a consulate in Springdale.
The reason for much of that growth can be pinpointed to the late 1970s, when a Marshallese man named John Moody left the islands to find new opportunities in the US, moving to Oklahoma on a Pell Grant. He eventually made his way to Springdale in the 1980s, where he took a position at a Tyson Foods poultry plant. Word of his success spread, and within a few years, emigration from the Marshall Islands to Springdale skyrocketed. In 1986, when the islands gained independence from the US, they entered into a pact called the Compact of Free Association, which opened the door for more Marshallese citizens to live and work freely in the US without a visa. Today, 30 percent of Tyson’s Springdale workforce is Marshallese.
In Marshallese, the islands are called Aelon̄ Kein Ad—our ocean, our sky, our land—a name that makes it impossible to separate people from place.
When you discuss the mass exodus from the islands in recent decades, it’s impossible to avoid discussing their tragic history. You can’t not mention 1954’s Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test, which delivered an explosion on par with 15 million tons of TNT, and sent white flurries of nuclear fallout raining down over the people inhabiting the atolls of Rongelap, Ailinginae, Rongerik, and Utirik. You can’t not talk about the 350-foot-wide concrete dome on Runit Island containing 100,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris, or the horror of children born without bones. When discussing climate change, you can’t not talk about the series of droughts and rapid sea-level rise that seized the islands in 2013 and 2014; about the RMI government’s plans to keep the tides at bay; or about 1.5°C—the rise in global temperature said to be a fatal tipping point, and the number that adorns the national team’s “no-home” jersey. And you certainly can’t ignore how these islands, even in the best of circumstances, may not exist within decades.
And yet, while these tragedies are inextricably linked and are vital pieces to this story, it’s hard when tragedy is the only thing that people outside your culture know about you. Joel Leban, a board member of Springdale’s Islanders Youth Athletic Outreach Program, which supports community youth through sports, said many young people have told him they don’t want to be defined by their people’s history.
“They want to have their own identity. They don’t want to be always living off that story,” Leban said. “Nowadays, these kids want to do things on their own. They want to pave their own path.”
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Matt John’s path unwaveringly hewed to soccer. His Marshallese culture, on the other hand, was a distant concept, one that didn’t have much resonance beyond the statement, “I am Marshallese.” He felt the magnitude of his heritage—and his disconnection from it—during visits to Springdale, where his extended family spoke a language he did not know. When his family moved to Arkansas when he was not quite 13 years old, he immediately felt adrift.
On the soccer field, a place where he’d always felt most at home, he felt out of place as the only person of color, and soon left the team. At school, the administration initially put him in an ESL program because they assumed he didn’t speak English, but it was the only language he spoke. There were other Marshallese kids, more than he’d ever been around before, but his inability to speak Marshallese created barriers. In Springdale, he found he was not Marshallese enough, but also not American enough.
For his entire life, the Marshall Islands had largely been an idea, an inheritance: composites of stories, passed-down photographs, fragments of knowledge.
Eventually, Matt began to ask himself who he really was. In his junior year, he started to sing in an a capella Marshallese boy band, MARK Harmony. At first, the band was a way to explore his identity. Over time, music, along with his position at the Marshallese Educational Initiative, which was dedicated to spreading awareness about Marshallese culture and education, became an outlet to share stories about the islands with others.
For his entire life, the Marshall Islands had largely been an idea, an inheritance: composites of stories, passed-down photographs, fragments of knowledge. In 2023, when his band was invited to travel to the islands for a monthlong trip as part of a documentary film, he was finally able to see them for himself. He embraced the music around him in the form of language, elders’ stories, and the voices of young people. In the vastness of the Pacific, he realized how little there was separating land, ocean, and people. And that everything he did—as an educator, musician, and soccer player—could help others find their paths, too.
Gradually, the connections among the players took hold, especially in the moments of levity and easy laughter, when the pressure was off. When Matt Perrella, the goalie coach-slash-goalie, yelled at the top of his lungs for Patrick Phelon to get his butt closer to the ground during post-practice stretches. In the chance meetings on the Mount Sequoyah campus, where the coaches hung the flags of the participating countries from the eaves of the dining hall where they had meals. And in the quieter moments, like when one guy returned to the main house while a teammate was FaceTiming with his girlfriend, and he asked, Hey, do you want to meet her?
On the field, these connections began to translate into patterns. The players began to anticipate each others’ runs and where the ball would go next before it even arrived—the kind of instinct that comes not from diagrams, but from time spent together.
As the players sprinted across the field, judging the physical distance between themselves and their teammates, they were reading the space, reading one another, developing their own sort of wayfinding.
At the time, he may not have been able to find the words, but Matt John would eventually see in this team echoes from the past—how previous generations of Marshallese launched their outrigger canoes into the water, each person with a specific function as they navigated the open ocean, much in the same way that they each had roles on the pitch.
At the start of their time together in Arkansas, the team had naturally separated into cliques like scattered islands. By the time they celebrated Aaron Anitok-Brokken’s 18th birthday—after several days of getting to know one another on and off the field—they clustered around one table in the dining hall to sing “Happy Birthday.” Under the same banner, together.
On August 14, 2025—five days after the team’s first practice—a crowd filled Jarrell Williams Bulldog Stadium. Feet slammed on the bleachers, Marshallese flags of every size unfurled in the stands, and an announcer’s voice ranged through a wave of static. There were signs that the rest of the world had noticed as well. A printout taped to a brick column near the entrance advised guests that a film crew was on site. Local media bustled about the sidelines, snapping photos and recording B-roll, alongside a handful of soccer bloggers and influencers who had come from all around the world.
One of them, Matthew Eide—a blogger who highlights remote footballing outposts in far-flung places like Bhutan and Seychelles—described the night’s match as “a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
That sentiment echoed throughout the stadium in excited conversations, joyful flag-waving, and great whooping call-and-responses. Scott Hill dug through his bag for the stick charts, each roughly the size of a sheet of printer paper, and said he could almost feel himself tearing up in anticipation of this moment. Looking up, he noticed the game’s three referees walk by.
“History!” Hill exclaimed. “You guys are the first to officiate!”
Just steps away at the southern end zone, a woman in the second-story VIP section dropped a bundle of miniature RMI flags from the balcony. “Make sure I get these back,” she said with a loud laugh. As the flags were handed out to some 20 Marshallese kids—mostly boys with a few girls—who stood waiting with Joel Leban near the entrance to the field, the teams emerged from the locker room. Although the Marshallese players were mostly stone-faced, their eyes—briefly flitting over to the crowd and the many cameras that followed them onto the field—belied both their excitement and anxiety at the gravity of the moment.
“Everybody around the world,” the announcer shouted, “please welcome for the first time . . . Team Marshall Islands! Make some noise! Make some noise!”
As the crowd spoke as one, the stadium’s speakers were filled with the upbeat tropical sounds of “My Island,” featuring the artist Yastamon, who’d been flown in for the occasion. The boys and girls—some in cleats and jerseys, others in street clothes, all of them undoubtedly soccer fans from this moment forward—waved their miniature flags. At the song’s lilting refrain, the kids led the teams onto the field, the crowd growing still louder.
“Let me take you to my roots
Take you to my islands I’m talking palm trees
Beautiful horizon
Sunshine and blue skies we vibe’n
692 yeah that’s my island.”
“You are part of history in the making!” the announcer shouted as the Marshallese players reached the center of the field and stood over the Springdale High School Bulldogs logo, facing the crowd. A videographer slowly made his way across the line of players with his camera canted up, capturing their nervous yet proud faces, as the Marshallese anthem resonated through the speakers—the first time it had played for this international team.
Just a few minutes into the game, a free kick from roughly 30 yards back passed over the fingers of Marshallese team keeper Matt Perrella. It was the sort of shot, the live broadcast commentators agreed, that couldn’t have been placed any more perfectly. But in that play, there was something of a silver lining. “Not the start the Marshallese wanted,” said commentator Carter Henson, “but it’s happened—you can take a collective exhale. It’s not going to come easy in your first-ever international fixture.”
The US Virgin Islands, coming off a match against Turks and Caicos the night before, appeared vulnerable at times, and there were moments when the Marshallese team outplayed them. Their futsal roots sometimes showed in the way they swarmed the ball in the middle of the field. But in time, the Virgin Islands took control of the game’s tempo, slowing it down and keeping possession of the ball.
Shortly before the half, the Virgin Islands scored another goal on a penalty kick. In the second half, they scored another two.
Under normal circumstances, you’d expect a team shut out 4-0 to be disheartened, especially one built up so much over the last several weeks. And yet nothing about the atmosphere suggested failure. Even as the clock wound down, seven players subbed in within the last 14 minutes, each getting a brief chance to play for their country. The crowd poured down the bleachers and stood at the front railing, cheering on the team that had given it their all.
“Marshall Islands!” the announcer yelled as the crowd burst into cheers. “Give it up for your first national team playing their first international match!”
Even as the clock wound down, seven players subbed in within the last 14 minutes, each getting a brief chance to play for their country.
The team clustered a short distance from the bleachers, as if uncertain what they should do. Then a few players, Matt John among them, broke from the fray and led their teammates toward the stands. What followed was inevitable, like the flow of an ocean current: The team surged forward and leaned over the chainlink fence, where they were wrapped in embraces, cheered on by people they did not know. Nearby, Matt stepped onto the metal benches, where just days before he’d laced up his cleats for the team’s first practice, hugged his 8-year-old nephew over the railing, and then raised his hands above his head to form a heart.
The score didn’t matter; nor did the sport, really. This crowd—which shows up all year long for this school, for this community—cheered them on wildly not because they were the first, but because they represented a nation scattered across land and sea, united by something no distance could undo. Whatever barriers had existed a week ago were now gone.
The next day, the team hosted a free skills clinic for the community at a field a few miles down the road.
It lacked the stadium’s fanfare—just well-worn grass, a single goal, a chainlink fence, broken in but not neglected. Still, there was a magnetism here, too, subtler though no less real. Shortly after 6 p.m., the field filled with younger players, most of whom were no taller than the players’ chests. Some were familiar faces—kids who’d held flags the night before as the teams took to the field. Some were dropped off by their parents; others arrived with Joel Leban and other dads from the Islanders Youth Athletic Outreach Program, who all watched from the sidelines.
The kids took turns shooting on goalkeeper Matt Perrella. When one of their balls sailed past him, his teammates applauded.
“You guys don’t clap for me when I make a save!” Perella said.
“That’s because it’s your job!” Matt John yelled, smiling.
As the clinic continued, déjà vu kicked in: The kids lined up and did the same warm-ups that the national team had done just days before.
“Alright, you guys have now completed the first half of the pro warm-ups,” midfielder Lucas Schriver said, unintentionally echoing what Coach Johnson told them after their first practice. There was talk about the importance of communication (“make sure you’re talking”). A good bit of pointing and not-knowing of names (“white shirt, white shirt, you guys are the white team”). And lots of encouragement and fist bumps—all of it steadily building something between these kids, even if they were just connecting for a 90-second game. Watching them, you could see it: another beginning.
And yet, the future comes at a steady clip. The following day, the team will square up against Turks and Caicos for their second and final matchup in the Outrigger Cup. They will fall 3-2, but consider it a victory as defender Josiah Blanton scores the team’s first-ever goal and Aaron Anitok-Brokken lands a penalty kick.
In the months ahead, members of the men’s national team will host a beach cleanup on Ebeye and then make their way back to Arkansas for a national team training camp. The women’s team will hold its third national team training camp and continue to build toward their own historic debut. Off the field, the picture will grow still larger: Roughly a month after the tournament, Matt John and the Marshallese Educational Initiative will host Manit Week, educating visitors about all aspects of Marshallese culture, including the harder-to-hear truths about climate change and the islands’ nuclear legacy. The future keeps moving forward, headlong. The waters will rise, and the world will continue its steady march into increasingly uncertain times.
But for this moment, the future looked very bright. Watching these young Marshallese players carom around the field in red and yellow pinnies, tripping over the ball as they try to steal it from one another in a tightly cordoned space, you can’t help but wonder whether some of them might fill Matt John’s or Lucas Schriver’s or Aaron Anitok-Brokken’s shoes one day—that maybe they’ll help future generations navigate these strange waters as well.
As the evening drew to a close, Matt John jogged over to the sidelines where the guys from the Islanders Youth Athletic Outreach Program watched from a low fence. After a few jokes, Jomar Dela Peña, the program’s director, looked out at the young players buzzing around the field. He hadn’t seen much soccer in his community before, he said—no one had really put a spotlight on it.
“Well,” Matt said, “here it is.”
Jordan P. Hickey is a Northwest Arkansas-based freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, VQR, Investigate Midwest, and Southern Foodways Alliance, among others. He is a 2025-26 Food Systems and Public Health Fellow at Johns Hopkins, and was a 2025 James Beard Award finalist in profile writing for his 2024 Longreads story, “The Expanding Table: Honoring Palestinian Culinary Tradition in Arkansas.”
Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Fact-checker: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Copyeditor: Peter Rubin
