SRFC Unified Team Goes on the Road for First-Ever Special Olympics Tournament in SoCal

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USL Sacramento Republic FC

SRFC Unified Team Goes on the Road for First-Ever Special Olympics Tournament in SoCal

July 18, 2025 - United Soccer League Championship (USL)
Sacramento Republic FC News Release


On Sunday July 20, four California clubs will compete in the first-ever Special Olympics Unified Teams Tournament in southern California. Teams from Sacramento Republic FC, LA Galaxy, LAFC, and San Jose Earthquakes will all take the pitch to celebrate inclusion and the love of the game.

Unified sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. It was inspired by a simple principle: training and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding. Republic FC's squad is coached by Filip Handl, the club's Manager of Soccer Programming and a longtime volunteer with Special Olympics Northern California.

Led by team captains Cam Newton and Matt Briseno, Republic FC's squad returns for its third season with the showcase tournament in southern California. The squad features 26 local athletes - including 10 athletes from the inaugural side - that don the Republic FC crest and kit on the pitch just as players on the first team do.

The 2025 season is off to a solid start for the Republic FC Unified Team, who remains unbeaten through its opening two matches. They kicked things off with an exciting come-from-behind 3-2 win over Colorado Springs, followed by a 3-3 draw against San Jose Earthquakes. After a short road trip to Sunnyvale in May, the team is now preparing for their first overnight trip of the season, with another scheduled for September - a double-header alongside the first team with a fixture against Colorado Springs Switchbacks.

The four teams will play three, 60-minute matches in a round robin-style tournament from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Jesse Owens Stadium at Cal State LA. There will be two fields running games at the same time, 5-minute halftimes and 10 minutes between each match. The tournament winner will be the team with the most points and announced at the end of the day.

The shorter 9v9 matches calls on teams to travel with a larger roster, with 23 members of the squad's roster traveling to Cal State LA ."We want to be able to rotate players and make sure that everyone stays ready and healthy," says head coach Filip Handl. The full coaching staff will also be making the trip along with representation from the Northern California Special Olympics office.

"We have spent the last few weeks training on 9v9 formation, really focusing on our passing and attacking, since those were the areas we struggled in last year when playing against the LA teams," says Handl.

The squad has been putting in the work and fine tuning for this weekend's California showcase. "The biggest challenge I see is going to be the workload of playing games back to back as well as playing on a turf surface. We are moving our final training session to a turf stadium to get used to that playing surface, and have been playing longer games in our sessions to help build endurance," says Handl.

"It's an away game, and we're out of our comfort zone, and how we are going to tackle that is by focusing on our training and listening to our coaches, and getting those goals," says team captain Newton.

Across the U.S. soccer community, unified teams are taking to the pitch and showing off their skills. All 29 clubs in Major League Soccer and six in USL Championship and USL League One field a Unified Team in partnership with local Special Olympics chapters. With more in development and set to take the pitch across the country in the coming year, the program has a big future ahead.

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The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

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