For 90 minutes on a muggy, midsummer Saturday, Wauwatosa’s Hart Park entered the world stage as a focal point of competitive youth soccer.
A team of high school-age boys from Tosa, wearing the Tosa Kickers’ blue and white, took the field at Hart Park’s stadium on Aug. 15 for a match against the visiting Bohemians from Galway, Ireland, wearing red and white. A small group of of parents cheered from the Hart Park stands as flags of both the United States and Ireland were posted on the sidelines, flapping in a light breeze that offered little relief from the bodily cling of humidity.
The cross-cultural matchup had been in the works since last year, when a delegation from Galway visited the Milwaukee Kickers’ home facility, Uihlein Soccer Park, as part of a more than 30-year-old sister city relationship nurtured by CelticMKE.
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With CelticMKE’s Milwaukee Irish Fest underway this weekend at the Summerfest grounds in Milwaukee, Galway’s visiting youth soccer team had plans to attend the festival in the evening. The main events, though, were its Saturday game at Hart Park and a Sunday game against a Milwaukee team at Uihein.
“They’re here for the full experience,” Cailin Branchford, program manager for CelticMKE told Tosa Forward News before the start of the Aug. 15 game. “This is our first year bringing a sports team over. …. A lot of these kids, it’s their first trip to the States, and we hope to get some U.S. teams over to Galway in the future.”
For the opening ceremonies, two younger siblings of Tosa players were drafted to carry the two flags out to the center of the field, where both teams lined up for introductions. The Irish-accented voice through the Hart Park sound system presented the occasion as “the first ever meeting between the Galway Bohemians and Tosa Kickers.”