When moving from one country to another, it’s easy to feel a desire to connect back to home.
It’s also possible to get stuck in a routine as you try to establish yourself in a new place and find a new community of friends.
Those two desires collided into one solution for Vanesa Aranguren, a native of Venezuela now living in the Portland-metro area.
Aranguren, wishing to break out of the daily cycle she found herself in and wanting to find a connection back to home, started a kickingball team.
No, not kickball. Kickingball.
It’s a slight variation of kickball that is popular in Venezuela. Aranguren described how she remembered playing the game growing up at school.
The ball is nearly identical to a soccer ball and the fielding team has 10 players on the field, the tenth one playing between third base and home.
Starting a team was the perfect solution for Aranguren, who described how she was pursuing a degree in physical education back in Venezuela alongside her husband, Francisco Diaz, who coaches the PDX Kickingball team.
Aranguren put out the call last year on social media and through word of mouth to drum up some players, and the response was more than she could have expected.
Growing from seven players to 32 last year, Kickingball PDX — made up almost entirely of Venezuelan migrants in the Portland area — practices next to Merlo Station High School in Beaverton.
“Now that I’m here, I wanted to do something else,” Aranguren said. “It’s so much fun and I feel proud of myself. I’m so happy it’s still here.”
The number of Venezuelan migrants living in the U.S. have sharply increased since 2010, according to a 2021 survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau.
There were about 75,000 Venezuelan-born migrants living in the U.S. in 2000, and that number increased to 490,000 by 2021.
Aranguren described how the motivation for her to leave her home country was due to the political unrest happening in Venezuela and the lack of resources residents have lost because of it.
Thousands of miles away in the Pacific Northwest, Aranguren has been able to find a little piece of home on the kickingball diamond.
“I’m so grateful that we have this little team because we support each other,” Okla Leal, a player on the team since last year, said. “We share adventures, food together, we get together and prepare any kind of old Venezuelan food. I feel less alone having these women around, even the words that I sometimes forget.”
The tough part of PDX Kickingball is there aren’t any other area teams, leaving the games to be played at national tournaments. Next up is one in Memphis on June 1 and 2, a tournament the local squad attended last year and took fifth out of six teams.
The squad is currently trying to raise funds for the trip through a GoFundMe fundraiser online , along with hosting events in person like bingo with prizes.
While being able to play against other teams is what the team is looking for, getting the chance to travel to another part of the country and see the world is the real experience PDX Kickingball is hoping to give to its players.
“Many of us haven’t had the chance before to travel,” Leal said. “For many of us, it was the first time on a plane, first time in Memphis, first time on the other side of the United States, so it was really cool.
“We had a layover in Vegas, eight hours, it was awesome. All together. And then playing (in Memphis) and getting to play the other teams from other states but from Venezuela as well, it was amazing, it was awesome. I look forward to going to the next one.”
While being on the road is a great experience, having PDX Kickingball at home means more than a way to exercise and compete.
For many of the women on the team, finding community in the Portland area isn’t easy, especially mixing in that many are still learning English.
But now the women are surrounded by people who can relate to the struggles of moving to the U.S. and who can help celebrate their culture daily.
“I know for most of them, because they don’t speak English, it’s so hard (to find community),” Leal said. “So having this group of our community has helped them feel less lonely.
“I have been asking to go hiking, it’s something that we don’t do in Venezuela, but we have many places to go hiking here. So I arranged to get some of the girls to come with me. We went to Pittock Mansion for our first hike ever and we were exhausted.”
This year’s squad currently stands at around 21 players, and Aranguren said more are welcome if interested.
Aranguren is currently pregnant and unable to play.
Even though she’s on the sidelines, the growth she’s witnessed from less than two years of organizing the squad is an awesome sight to see.
The money PDX Kickingball is looking to raise isn’t just for Memphis, either, as Aranguren said there is a tournament in Austin, Texas, the group hopes to make in September as well.
Any donation is appreciated by the group as the players hope to continue providing a space for their community to come out and feel like home for a couple hours a day.
“Having them around just makes my days happier, a lot happier,” Leal said.
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