Their goal: share soccer with the less fortunate

July 1, 2012

Nine-year-old Nick Kirby donates some of his and a friend's used soccer equipment, including shoes, shin guards and a soccer ball, to longtime soccer coach Carlos Costa, who will be travelling to the Azores to donate the equipment to youth there. Photo/Ernest A. Brown

WOONSOCKET – When nine-year-old Nick Kirby found out his soccer coach was donating used soccer equipment to children in Portugal, he knew what he had to do.
Nick rounded up a few pairs of soccer cleats, some shin pads and a slightly scuffed soccer ball, stuffed them in a shopping bag and handed them over to Carlos Costa at the River’s Edge Recreational Complex Thursday.
“It’s great that other kids will get to experience soccer, too,” said Kirby.
Costa, 38, was born in the Azorean coastal town of Santa Clara and came here with his parents, looking for a better life, in 1985. Now the Woonsocket resident is a wellness teacher and soccer coach in Bellingham public schools and runs a private clinic named for his hometown, the Santa Clara Soccer School. The school offers summertime soccer clinics in Blackstone as well as Bellingham.

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