Meet Dillon Chapman and Tim Walsh of Venice Beach Football Club

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dillon Chapman and Tim Walsh.

Dillon and Tim, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Venice Beach FC started when Tim and I met and brought together our experiences and ideas around the game of soccer. Having both finished up playing careers abroad, we met playing in the local men’s leagues here. Both of us grew up engulfed in the American soccer system and had the ability to work and play soccer abroad. Soccer in America has grown tremendously on a professional/business level over the last 10 years but still lacking in a lot of areas compared to other countries in the world in terms of local opportunities. In our view, our country needs to fill in the gaps in local soccer communities from the ground up, rather than the top down which it has been. Through our experience living in Venice and training local players, we noticed soccer was everywhere but nothing was organized within our neighborhood. We started to get the ball rolling on how we could use our experiences, knowledge and network of players/coaches around the world to build something of value that could serve local teams, players and fans within our own community. In the last year, we’ve been able to host weekly open pick up games, worked with dozens of local and global professional players, and built a community of ambitious, driven, talented local youth players committed to success on the field and off.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
In one year as an organization, we have grown very quickly. The community and our supporters have responded very positively to what we are setting out to achieve. We are fortunate to be surrounded by some great people who believe our cause and support the growth of the game locally. We have luckily not had any major setbacks but are learning the ropes as we go about pulling off all of our programs and events.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Venice Beach Football Club story. Tell us more about the business.
Venice Beach Football Club is a community-club organization focused on celebrating local football & creating resources and opportunities for teams, players, coaches to excel at any level of their career. We work with players from youth-professionals to offer supplemental training opportunities focused on the individual, while offering a network of resources of professional players, trainers and specialists. For the youth, we offer training, camps, pro-clinics and unique playing experiences. For the older players in college/professional, we host offseason training camps in the summer/winter months. We’re different from most clubs as in America, a soccer club is usually a youth travel team or a professional franchise. We’re neither. For us, youth championships are not desirable. Winning is a by-product of habits and we focus primarily on trying to help empower individuals to succeed or use soccer as a tool to better their lives.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We will have to wait and see.

Contact Info:

• Address: Venice Beach FC 21 Westminster Ave. #107 Venice, CA 90291
• Website: venicebeachfc.com
• Phone: 248-388-1232
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @vb.fc
• Facebook: facebook.com/venicebeachfc
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/venice-beach-fc-venice-2
• Other: vimeo.com/vbfc

Image Credit:
Joe Walsh – @tmesisfc

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