When the Northwestern boys soccer team made a run in the state tournament in the fall of 2017, Noah Meyers saw the way the community could come together and support each other through sports.

Meyers is now looking to gather the community through soccer once again with his new semiprofessional soccer club, Pennsylvania Prime FC.

Meyers first had the idea to start the club in the spring of 2021.

He had been playing with another semipro club and decided he wanted to try out starting his own team with some of his friends and teammates.

Upon creating the club Meyers realized there was far more interest from people outside of his own circle than he had initially expected.

“We ended up making some social media and within a month or so it really blew up and lots of people were super interested,” said Meyers. “We had people from out of country messaging us, people from out of state messaging us, asking when tryouts were. So it started to get a lot bigger than a club that was meant to be put together for some friends.”

Meyers had already recruited about 15 players to join the club, including some former USL players, UPSL players, and former college players. He held tryouts to fill out the rest of the roster.

“We ended up having 112 people come out to tryouts,” said Meyers. “Our original goal was around 40 and we more than doubled that. We actually even had more people that wanted to try out but we had to close registration a couple days early to prep for everything.”

Along with drawing interest from a lot of talented players, the club managed to get itself a coach with an impressive background as Pennsylvania Prime FC brought in Ben Hoffman. Hoffman played soccer at the University of Massachusetts and has experience coaching professionally in the Australian Premier League.

With its roster set and a coach appointed, Pennsylvania Prime FC is now gearing up toward its inaugural season in the United Premier Soccer League.

The club has friendlies starting in February and will begin its regular season in April. Pennsylvania Prime FC will be playing home games at Cedar Crest College this season.

Outside of a successful season, Meyers has other goals for the club as well.

“With my state soccer run we had huge community involvement and I thought I could probably do something similar to that and get the community involved,” said Meyers.

With community involvement as a focus, Pennsylvania Prime FC is not only worried about its performance on the field but the impact it can have on others as well.

“We donated toys and soccer balls to a toy drive,” said Meyers. “I’ve been in communication with a few charities about donating soccer gear to people in need over in Africa. It’s always our goal to benefit the community in any ways we can.”