by Lijah Sampson for The Mountain Mail and available here
With 120 players participating in the competitive Chaffee County United Soccer Club, it might be easy to forget how soccer in Chaffee County was, not so long ago, small and divided. Coach Ben Oswald, an instrumental part of shaping youth soccer in Chaffee County, was recently named the 93rd inductee into the Colorado Soccer Association Hall of Fame. Oswald coached 40 years total.
Oswald, raised in Chappell, Nebraska, started playing soccer at the age of 29. “I’m an odd duck in the whole affair,” he said. “We didn’t have it out there in the prairie.” Oswald first saw soccer when he went to Goshen College in Indiana. He moved to Cotopaxi in the early 1970s and to Salida in 1978.
