The Full Story
The Team’s Origin
Our team originated from the town of Juanacatlan, Jalisco in Mexico. It’s a town that has been agriculturally rich and known for farming predating Mexico’s colonization by the Spanish. The name of the town in its original native language was Xonacatlan, or “land of abundant onions.” To this day it remains a place filled with proud hardworking people who value family, faith, and community above most other things. Soccer in particular has been a unifying aspect of the people of Juanacatlan. The soccer club itself was started over 105 years ago and to this day continues to provide an opportunity for over 250 children in the community to have an outlet for play, competition, teamwork and all the positive lessons that come from participating in organized sports.
Chicago’s Juanacatlan Gorillas Soccer Team
As residents of Juanacatlan migrated north, a group settled in the Chicago area where they organized their own soccer team. Starting in the 1980’s, the team began playing in Chicago’s Hispano and Clasa Leagues. By the early 2000’s, the team moved to Chicago’s competitive National League. With this change, the team also experienced a shift among its members. The team, which was primarily Mexican, began to take on a different look. With players from a full spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, and orientations represented, diversity is our established norm. It’s in this dynamic nature of the team that a unique sense of community, appreciation, and acceptance exists. We are a team that prides itself on being a family.
Presently, we have four highly competitive teams in Chicago: a men's, a coed, an over 30's and an over 40's team. Each of these has won a slew of championships. Our teams typically play year-round and in various leagues located within the city, namely the National-Metro League and the Chicago Fire Rec Soccer League.
A relationship that reached the natural conclusion of charity
The team founder and president, Marcos Briseño, has an appreciation of history and a love for his hometown of Juanacatlan. As the only remaining member of the town currently with the team, he felt it was important to build a connection between the current players and the soccer club in Juanacatlan. Beginning in 2015, Marcos invited a group of players to travel to Mexico and visit the town. The guys joined the local team in a few friendly matches, met many of the people involved with the club and began a new relationship that has continued to build to this day.
Marcos has continued to invite players from the Chicago team for this soccer sojourn to Juanacatlan on a cadence of every 18 months. Many of the players have returned multiple times and have described the trips as powerful and memorable. The consensus from these visits is typically that the people of the town are amazing. It is, however, evident that the work-life quality is challenging and there is a significant amount of poverty throughout the community. With each subsequent visit, players from Chicago traveling to the town have brought soccer equipment, classroom material and other goods to donate to kids and players from the town. Beginning in 2022, our club provided finances to help support the Juanacatlan girls' soccer team and the club's special needs team, Osos Down.
In 2023, the Juanacatlan Gorillas Inc, a Not-for-profit (JFC Gorillas) was formally created. Having recognized the opportunity to make a lasting impact on a community by investing in its youth, we have made it our mission to invest in these young people on and off the field. In addition to setting goals of meeting the financial cost of each of the youth teams in Juanacatlan, we are also targeting funding GED equivalent programs for the older youth as well as cost for trade schools for individuals who choose to pursue a future in the trades. We also have expanded our focus to helping youth in communities where our Chicago players come from around the globe. In 2024, we will also support one of our players, Toyi Ancelot, who will be traveling to his home in Burundi, Africa. Our most achievable goal is to fund an eight-day soccer camp for kids in the village. The more ambitious goal is to build a soccer field for the village.