ANCHORAGE, Alaska — In a city where public school students speak a combined 112 languages at home, soccer has served for more than a decade as one of the first shared activities available to children arriving in Alaska as refugees, according to resettlement workers and news accounts of the programs.

Soccer Speaks Every Language in Anchorage
Soccer Speaks Every Language in Anchorage

Catholic Social Services’ Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services program, known as RAIS, launched a summer soccer program for refugee children in Anchorage and deliberately kept the participants together on a single team spanning multiple age divisions and including both boys and girls, so the children would not have to constantly assimilate into unfamiliar groups. Program director Karen Ferguson said at the time that the children also need a chance to just be refugee kids, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The team, known as the Fugees, included players who had arrived in Alaska from Somalia, Bhutan and Gambia. They were united by shared experience and a shared love of the game despite differences in language, culture and ethnicity, according to the same report.

A worn soccer ball and cleats resting on dewy grass with blurred children in the background
A worn soccer ball and cleats resting on dewy grass with blurred children in the background

From recreation league to high school rosters

For some players, the recreational team became a bridge to the rest of the city. Brothers Abdi and Abdallah Zirah struggled to integrate in Anchorage until they joined “AK Fugees,” a recreational league team run by Catholic Social Services, after which they began making friends and picking up English, the Anchorage Daily News reported in 2015.

At the time, Catholic Social Services’ refugee resettlement program was helping about 130 refugees settle in Anchorage each year, according to then-director Jessica Kovarik, the newspaper reported.

The Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services program is based at 4600 DeBarr Road in Anchorage, with additional offices in Delta Junction and Wasilla. The program describes its focus as economic self-sufficiency, community integration, and respect for unique cultures, history and traditions, according to the agency.

Teacher kneeling beside students from different backgrounds in a sunlit classroom
Teacher kneeling beside students from different backgrounds in a sunlit classroom

A diverse city

The soccer programs took root in a city that federal researchers have described as home to some of the most ethno-racially diverse neighborhoods and public schools in the United States. Nearly one in 10 Anchorage residents identifies as foreign born, and the school district has identified more than 100 languages spoken by English-language learners or their families, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Students in the Anchorage School District speak a combined 112 languages at home, with Spanish, Samoan, Filipino and Hmong making up the largest speaker groups and close to 2,000 Spanish speakers. In 18 district schools, the student body collectively speaks 20 languages, the Anchorage Daily News reported in November 2024.

The Municipality of Anchorage’s language access planning documents state that more than 100 languages are spoken in the school district and that the city’s Mountain View neighborhood is the most diverse neighborhood in the nation, according to the 2018 plan. A demographer and sociology professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage identified Mountain View as America’s most diverse neighborhood and found that Anchorage ranks 30th out of 366 metropolitan areas for diversity, ranking second only to Honolulu in its biracial and multiracial population, UAA reported.

Schools have adapted alongside the sports programs. Anchorage’s Newcomers’ Center, housed at Wendler Middle School, opened in 1996 serving 11 students who were all Spanish speakers. By 2016, it served 87 students from more than 20 countries speaking more than 15 languages, Slate reported.

A quiet residential street in a diverse neighborhood with birch trees and distant snowy mountains
A quiet residential street in a diverse neighborhood with birch trees and distant snowy mountains

A shifting arrival picture

The population of newcomers feeding into those programs has changed substantially in recent years. Catholic Social Services estimated that just over 1,000 Ukrainians arrived in Alaska in the two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, significantly changing the state’s refugee picture, the Alaska Beacon reported in March 2024.

Between 2022 and 2024, Alaska welcomed an annual average of more than 450 new arrivals through refugee and humanitarian programs, a trend largely driven by Ukrainians fleeing the war. Arrivals have since been reduced to a trickle amid the dismantling of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Catholic Social Services reported that 42 refugees were resettled in Alaska in 2025, eight of them from South Africa, as federal refugee support services funding transitioned from the nonprofit to the new Alaska Office of Citizenship Assistance, Alaska’s News Source reported in January.

A youth soccer team of children from different backgrounds huddled together with their coach
A youth soccer team of children from different backgrounds huddled together with their coach

Where families play

Beyond formal resettlement services, refugee-run ethnic community-based organizations operate throughout Alaska to help various refugee communities integrate and succeed in their new homes, according to Refugee Council USA. Those groups have historically organized cultural events and recreation for their members.

For adults, Soccer Alaska, based in Anchorage, describes itself as Alaska’s largest adult soccer league, according to the organization.

The through line, as the players themselves described it a decade ago, is a sport that requires little translation. As the Anchorage Daily News put it in the headline of its 2015 report on prep soccer in the city, “The game’s a common language.”

Sources