Brunswick FC
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Brunswick Football Club begins fourth year in 2025
Emmanuel and Katie Sarkorh have seen their college dream become a reality by building Brunswick Football Club Academy, a soccer program that is meant to build a community through the sport.
“I grew up in West Africa, Liberia, and in the early 2000s there was a civil conflict in my country, and I was part of that from the age of five to about seven, eight years old. When you go through certain things like that as a kid, you know, you try to find joy in life. And soccer, or as we call it back home, football, was that joy for me. You know, after going through such a hard time in my young childhood, every time I touched the ball, every time I stepped on the pitch, I was always at peace. It was always a different world out there. So I always used to tell myself, growing up in a strong Christian home, I used to say, ‘Lord, if you give me an opportunity, if you give me the wisdom. I want to build an organization to let people understand this joy too,” Emmanuel Sarkorh said.
“When I met my wife in college in Greenville, I expressed my dream to her. And she said ‘Then we’re going to make this happen.’ So we took the journey. We built an organization and we established it. And, you know, every tournament we go to and see families get closer, get to know each other, kids find best friends through our organization, it puts a smile on our faces because this was the full intent of this dream. For people to have joy, for people to find a community, a village. To enjoy themselves. This was a dream, then love blessed me with a wife who pushed me and helped me to turn this dream into a reality.”
In four years, Brunswick Football Club has grown from one 14-player team to nine teams for all ages, including seven boys’ teams and two girls’ teams that are about to begin a new spring season.
“Our affiliation is US Club Soccer, that is the umbrella we’re under,” Emmanuel Sarkorh said.
“Our organization has two seasons. We have a spring season that goes from January to June, pretty much. Then we have a fall season that goes from August to November. So we are kind of year-round.”
“We’ve grown the organization massively. We’ve got seven boys program this spring season, and we got two girls program this spring season. We’re growing rapidly with the boys’ teams and we are happy to see the growth too with the girls’ teams starting to develop. Our goal is to continue to grow.”
Emmanuel Sarkorh, the West Brunswick boys’ varsity head coach, started as the only Brunswick FC coach but now is one of 10 coaches, who have been involved in the club, including West Brunswick girls’ soccer coach Greer Josselyn and South Brunswick High School coach Logan Adkisson.
U14 Girls — Coach Logan Adkisson, U18 Girls — Coach Greer Josselyn/Coach Logan Adkisson.
U10 Boys — Coach Tyler Bullock, U11 Boys — Coach Garrett Strader, U13 Boys — Coach Konnor Dehmlow/Coach Thomas McGhee, U15 Boys — Coach Emmanuel Sarkorh, U16 Boys — Coach Garrett Strader, U17 Boys — Coach Antony Tapia and U19 Boys — Coach Emmanuel Sarkorh.
“We got helping hands from the coach from South Brunswick, Logan Atkinson. He’s working with our girls’ program. Greer Josselyn, she’s here working with our girls’ program. Antony Tapia and I work with the boys. And we’ve got a lot of individuals who are helping also with the boys,” Emmanuel Sarkorh said.
“Having a pool of quality coaches growing within the county is always good to have. Just seeing that growth, but also seeing coaches on the high school level in Brunswick County as part of our program shows, all over the county what we’re trying to do with these organizations for the county. It’s just not one district of the county. We’re trying to get the whole of Brunswick County. We’re doing that from the Southport area to the Shallotte area.”
“We’ve been fortunate enough to have some kids coming out of Columbus County, Whiteville, Tabor City. Also from the north end. Last season we had about two or three kids coming from the Leland. But Columbus County, Winnabow Southport, Shallotte to Carolina Shores is our market, going to the state line of South Carolina.”
“We’re building and we will grow the game in the county. We have over 200 kids now. When we started about four years ago, we had about 14 kids, now we’re over that 200 benchmark. That’s always a positive thing.”
Sarkorh said they have a philosophy of instilling a love of the game in the kids when they are young and building their understanding of the game as they work their way up the age groups.
“From a club standpoint, we have a philosophy where from the U10 to U11, because it’s 7 on 7 and 9 on 9, we focus a lot on letting the kids just play, having the free flow part of the game, making them fall in love with it. The joy, the stuff that you will never get rid of, no matter how far you go up the ladder in different age groups,” Emmanuel Sarkorh said.
“When they get to U13, to U15, we kind of implement the structure of the technical but also the tactical aspect of the game, our shift, our positions, our formations, our ideas, the purpose — why do we do certain things? How do we do it? If we lose the ball, where are we? How do we win the ball back? When we receive the ball, what are we trying to do? What are the patterns we see? When they get from U15 to U19, pretty much we’re training them on a higher level, to understand the game. We will set up the blueprint, and we want the players who are on the field to pretty much be coaches in a sense. To have a better fundamental understanding of the game. How the coach sees it.”
