DOWNEY – Ambitious up-and-coming sports organization Home Field Advantage is heading into the new year with eyes set on expansion.

HFA has run after-school sports programming at Downey elementary and middle schools since the spring of 2017, focusing specifically on leadership development.

“Our goal from the beginning has always been to create a leadership program…through coaching education,” said founder Sacha van der Most van Spijk.

Originally centered around soccer, HFA has grown to include basketball and – most recently - tennis. Now, the organization is laser focused on embarking on its next phase.

“Our goal has always been to become more of a community sports club, and that’s really the step that we’re taking into 2023,” said van der Most van Spijk. “This fall we had the opportunity to get a building where we started our clubhouse.

“We have our day-to-day operations; we can do meetings there. So, for us, it’s a big year coming up.”

Originally from the Netherlands, van der Most van Spijk – who has experience working in youth development for professional soccer clubs including the Los Angeles Galaxy and the since folded Chivas USA – said “in the Netherlands, pretty much every neighborhood has their own sports club.”

He hopes to replicate and bring that reality into Downey.

“Right now, we’re at pretty much every school in the city of Downey with home-grown coaches,” said van der Most van Spijk. “We envision for the upcoming year to start teams for soccer, for basketball, on the youth side, and it may even be possible to start something for adults as well. Youth, adults, a true community sports club.”

“If you think about that in the Netherlands, or countries in Western Europe, they provide a team for anybody who wants to play, and that’s what we have in mind.”

HFA will hold a ribbon cutting for its new club house, located at the First Presbyterian Church of Downey, on Friday, along with its first ever community market event the following day.

In order for HFA to be successful as a club, van der Most van Spijk says HFA will need to further collaborate with both the school district and the city.

“The name says it: Home Field Advantage; we want to be as close to people as possible, to the community, within the neighborhoods, and that space is mainly available at the schools,” said van der Most van Spijk. “We are already at the schools; we are providing a service to the school district by having these young people become coaches.

“If our program is going to run successfully, then we need to have our kids have an opportunity to play at those fields in their own neighborhood.”

HFA team information is not that far away.

“Our plan is to start opening up for tryouts and for enrollment, pretty much, this upcoming spring,” said van der Most van Spijk. “If we get started truly with teams, that would get started in the fall of 2023.”

More information can be found at HFA-sports.org, and on Instagram at @hfasports.