The ratio of grass to dirt at Hicks hovers somewhere between 75 to 25 depending on the time of year. But for an amateur club, who play in the National Premier Soccer League and rely on steady pitch-in from fans and community members to keep the lights on and the good times going, you’d expect some bumps.
When Athletic lined up there earlier this month against crosstown professionals FC Tulsa, the dust whipped around the fading daylight in tiny whirlwinds.
Pride in Something Built
There’s a tangible swell of pride among the fans of Tulsa Athletic. The players too, like Ugbah, a forward who finds time to train around long days building the custom ladders used by airplane mechanics.
But there’s no one prouder of what the club’s become than Sonny Dalesandro. A former goalkeeper, who nipped around the edges of the pro game, he’s a well-known restaurateur and founder and owner of Tulsa Athletic.
“My dad grills the sausages on game day and my mom takes the tickets at the gate,” laughed the 45-year-old Dalesandro, who’ll talk at length about Hicks Park, home of the club he started with partner Dr. Tommy Kern in 2005 under the name Boston Avenue Athletic Club. “This is a community club – you come out on a Sunday, bring some beers, sit under a shade tree – and maybe help out where you can.”
Dalesandro out mowing the grass on the morning of a gameday, a cloud of dust kicked up around his noisy machine, has become part of the lore of the club. Before a recent game, he was out there helping spray weed-killer on the field before realizing he needed to be across town, at the restaurant he owns, Dalensandros, in an apron “on the line grilling swordfish.”
Like any good restaurateur, there’s a generous dash of the hustler about Dalesandro. Sprinkled with a good helping of charm, though, you don’t mind being led on a merry dance by the man whose major concern is making a “blueprint for smaller clubs in smaller communities” and “being a club that helps grow the game.”
“You won’t see too many team owners out there on a Sunday morning cutting the grass on the field so it’s ready to go for game time,” said the soft-spoken Titus Grant, a talented Tulsa Athletic midfielder out of Seattle Pacific University who, in his third year at the club, works days as a substitute teacher at a school for adults with disabilities.
The Big Game – One Tulsa vs. Another
When FC Tulsa’s players, local pros in the USL Championship, arrived at Hicks Park for their Open Cup Second Rounder, it was just another game. But for Athletic’s players, it was something more. A do-over. They’d been beaten by that same team in the previous year’s Open Cup and admit to being, as Ugbah described it: “intimidated by the fireworks and a little star-struck” in the 2-1 loss.
Grant described this year’s game as “ a chance to show them what we’re about.”
And where they live too.
