New club soccer team aims to raise well-rounded professional athletes

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

January 6, 2025

NORTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN – A new sports club with the “goal” of helping young athletes achieve their dreams of playing professionally is entering its first winter season.

Wisconsin Conquerors – according to its website, wisconsinconquerors.org – is a club soccer team operated by the nonprofit Central Wisconsin 3DSports Ministry, founded by Alexander Eddo “to raise up a new and complete athlete, using the 3D principle of Excellence³, excelling physically, mentally and spiritually.”

In 2023, Eddo said he started the nonprofit to help young athletes work toward their goal of playing professional soccer.

“Because I have a background in soccer, we know how to get players who want to play professionally to play at the highest level,” he said. “In doing the recruiting, we saw a lot of interest… but what I soon started to realize was that a lot of the players did not have the right attitude (and) mentality – they didn’t have the character to excel at that level.”

Eddo said he noticed a major disconnect between why the athletes wanted to play professional soccer and what the professional teams were seeking for their organizations.

“We just found players with really bad attitudes – no respect,” he said. “They’re not even team-oriented, and they want to play on a team. They’re just thinking about themselves.”

To help bridge that disconnect, Eddo started his nonprofit and the Wisconsin Conquerors club team with the goal of raising well-rounded athletes.

“We have a weekly mentoring program, teaching them about faith, teaching them about living for others, teaching them about being selfless,” he said. “That’s what teamwork is – and then trying to make them a better person, because you can’t function in a team if you don’t first focus on yourself, be better and then try to better others around you.”

While working in soccer recruitment, Eddo said he noticed Central Wisconsin didn’t have a club team that facilitated the preparation of athletes for professional careers.

“We didn’t really have somewhere where they (could) come and have a preparation phase,” he said. “This level of soccer doesn’t exist in Central Wisconsin. You can go to Minneapolis, you can go to Madison or Milwaukee, but there’s a gap here.”

Though there are plenty of youth soccer clubs, Eddo said there wasn’t a pathway for athletes wanting to rise to the next level of play.

“You have a lot of youth clubs that are well established, and you have a lot of facilities – really high-standard facilities – but then there just wasn’t that pathway,” he said.

The next level

The Wisconsin Conquerors club team, Eddo said, plays in two leagues – the MASL2 (Major Arena Soccer League 2) indoor and NPSL (National Premier Soccer League) outdoor leagues.

“We started in April (2024), and we played an indoor/outdoor season which (runs from) May until July,” he said. “Once that ended, we had a break in between and now the winter season started in December (and runs through) March.”

The NPSL, Eddo said, is a fourth-division U.S. soccer system “which is pre-professional” and requires that each player on the team be 16 years of age or older.

“So we try to recruit right around 15 and older,” he said. “You can be as old as you want, and in addition to that, we try to run some camps for the younger age groups to start trying to identify them and spot them early as well.”

Eddo said with the growing popularity around soccer he anticipates increased interest in pursuing a potential professional career in the sport.

“Soccer is growing in America,” he said. “The World Cup is coming here in 2026 – so it’s going to grow even more beyond that. So it’s trying to show people that there is an avenue if you want to go to the next level.”

To obtain membership into the national pre-professional leagues, Eddo said teams must apply and be accepted.

“They have to look at your business plan, they look at the location and the market and then they ultimately approve you to participate in the league,” he said.

Because Central Wisconsin 3DSports Ministry is a nonprofit, Eddo said the organization will fundraise so they don’t have to charge athletes to play on the team – leaving only the $100 application and tryout fee.

“All the players who played last year got free travel, they got free accommodation – it was a lot of cost to us, and we did that believing that this project is going to take off,” he said. “It’s difficult to get sponsorship because you’re a new entity, but ultimately, we want the community to understand that this is for them. This is for the kids and the grandkids, and we need them to come behind the club and help build it up.”

A new venture the club is considering, Eddo said, is an academy to bring up athletes from an even younger age than 16 – something the club would charge players to attend.

“We will charge the players, because now you have to really build them up from a young age,” he said.

However, when a player reaches their peak performance at around age 18, Eddo said they could be recruited to play for a team that would pay them for their skills.

“When you get to the professional level, you’re that good that the clubs are paying you for your service,” he said. “It’s a career, so it doesn’t cost you anything. They’re paying you, and they’ll pay you handsomely, too, because you’re going to bring the crowd, you’re going to bring trophies, you’re going to win competitions.”

Eddo said the Wisconsin Conquerors club team plays at a community stadium in Marshfield that it leases for its home games.

“We try to have a partnership with them,” he said. “They help us with concessions and that kind of stuff, so it’s worked out pretty well.”

A professional attitude

In addition to providing athletes the training they need to physically rise to the level of professional players, Eddo said he also prepares his team to adopt the mindset needed to ensure their success.

“We share the principles of Christ because I’m a Christian, and the principles, they go across the board,” he said. “You want to play as a team. You want to play as a member of a team. Who’s the greatest among you? It’s not the one who sits up and says, ‘Serve me.’ It’s the one that comes below and comes down low and serves the other. That’s the greatest among you.”

Eddo said society teaches young athletes to be the “GOAT” – which stands for Greatest Of All Time.

“All these players, they want to be the GOAT and they think (that means) to be up there and everyone is looking up to you,” he said. “But no, it’s not true. The right principle is if you come down and serve your fellow teammates, you are the greatest.”

Regardless of a player’s beliefs, Eddo said the principles taught through Central Wisconsin 3DSports Ministry’s mentorship program “better an individual and better the community.”

“We make them as comfortable as possible,” he said. “If they want to share their faith with the group, they can share their faith. There’s no discrimination.”

Being the only club team participating in the MASL2 and the NPSL leagues in the area, Eddo said the Wisconsin Conquerors travel to surrounding cities and states to play and, in turn, provide teams the opportunity to travel to North Central Wisconsin to play them as well.

“We’re playing against teams in Michigan, Kansas… we drove all the way down to Kansas twice,” he said. “We went to Iowa, we went out to Milwaukee and then down to Chicago as well… So it brings these clubs from all the states into the area. They stay in hotels, they eat in restaurants, (so) if we can get it right and have this (club) established, it’s something really great for the economy and the community.”

To learn more about the soccer club, visit wisconsinconquerors.org or find the team on Facebook.