Hillsboro Soccer Club, celebrating 40th anniversary, grows and adapts ‘the beautiful game’

He eventually settled in Hillsboro and joined the Hillsboro Soccer Club as a boy.

He now teaches the game as a coach to the couple’s children, who have played in the Hillsboro Soccer Club themselves.

The Hillsboro Soccer Club’s membership has swelled to about 2,200 school-aged boys and girls today, 97 percent of whom come from the Hillsboro School District.

The Hillsboro Soccer Club’s players have increasingly come from such worldly, “soccer-first” households, as the area’s high-tech and agricultural industries have attracted workers from soccer-first countries.

Three years ago, the club recruited Stan Baker, the boys soccer coach at Woodburn High School who in 2011 was named a national coach of the year by the United States Youth Soccer Association.

Baker, who played semi-pro soccer in Spain and Peru, now serves as the Hillsboro Soccer Club’s director of player development and coaching education.

The Hillsboro Soccer Club at both its recreational and competitive levels has channeled its coaching philosophy away from rote drills and toward a player-centric, game-based, cerebral approach.

Observing the world’s best players and teams helps internalize the game, Baker and Monteblanco said, just as young basketball players study LeBron James and the Golden State Warriors, who are more readily available on television.

Barber said the club wants to “improve the quality of life for people all around us,” regardless of a player’s skill level or prior experience playing soccer.