By: Daniel Talamantes

I

Sunday morning, the newly formed Tulare Angrense Athletic Club (TAAC) were to play their first game at Western High School in Tulare, California against Hanford Soccer Club.¹ It was 10:00 a.m., January 29, 1967; they might stretch or jog slowly along the sideline to warm-up as vapors of steam rise from their head and shoulders between diaphanous clouds of breath. Perhaps, some of the puddles on the mostly dirt field are icy, and their toes are stiff from the freeze. The morning sun was somewhere lost in a thick tule fog. A few jokes were made, perhaps, but it is early, and the players are trying to muster energy for the game. The team had only one scrimmage prior to the match and little practice.

Tulare Advanced-Register published an article, “Athletic Club Sees Future in Soccer” on January 17, 1967, announcing the formation of TAAC, with sponsorship from the American Veteran’s Post 56, and a club board comprising of Zave Egoian, John Costa, Jerry Reagan, Al Serpa, Joaquin Corrier Sr, and Manuel Toledo.² Al Serpa, who was the captain, was the only player out of the group.³ The newspaper article addressed their early intentions of creating a youth development program that would follow the model of little league baseball.⁴ The primary focus, however, was for the team to join the San Joaquin Valley Soccer League; but first, they had to recruit more players.

Boys and men from the region, maybe drawn by the articles in the Tulare Advanced-Register or by word of mouth at the local dairies, the predominant industry in the area, would have filtered into the side of field to spectate as preparations for the match were underway.⁵ A good majority of them were Azorean migrants.⁶ The articles encouraged young players in the Tulare area to speak with the team and introduce themselves to team captain Al Serpa before and after the game. Al Serpa, a first-generation migrant from Horta, Azores, “who learned soccer while still living in the Azores,” perhaps would have been a welcoming presence for these fresh players, some of whom may have faced similar language-barrier and work-commitment challenges he experienced on his arrival on July 19, 1959.⁷

An Azorean immigrant to Tulare, and TAAC player in the 1970s, Tony Fraga reiterated in an oral history conducted in 2019, that joining the team came at no small cost. Being able to play football came with many sacrifices. Fraga shares that the boys and men, often from the Azores, worked from 4 a.m. – 7 a.m. for one shift at the farm and had to return in the afternoon for another if they were in school. Only after the second shift of milking or feeding the cattle was soccer possible. If not in school they could be at the dairy farms all day, being permitted only two days off a month. Some would pay out of their own pockets to have someone else cover and milk the cows to play on Sundays. Fraga explained that practicing was their way out of the daily tedium and worth the effort. These challenges were not theirs alone but their families’ as well. It was perhaps the sacrifices, ones that trace back to the Azorean Islands, that eventually made them such a successful team and special club that served the community for years to come.⁸ 

II.

Though Tulare Angrense F.C. took on Sporting F.C.’s colors of green and white, the name was derived from Tulare’s sister city of Angra do Heroismo, Terceira, Azores.⁹ The association is not by coincidence. By the 1970s, ninety-eight percent of Portuguese nationality representation in the Central Valley was Azorean,increasing in population size from 7,990 in 1880 to 99,194 by 1930.Throughout the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, men and women migrated from the archipelago to join family members and friends in Central Valley of California.¹⁰ 

Why? “Times were hard,” Fraga explains about his youth in the Azores. Azores were a fragmented and peripheralized semi-colony of Portugal with a great majority of the land owned by the Lisboan elite.¹¹ Because of multinational military and commercial interests, Azoreans encountered exploitation, conscription, impoverishment, and famine resulting from the forced status as an export economy—let alone the frequent volcanic activity.¹² As conditions worsened in the Azores, desperation culminated in waves of migration to the Americas—the Central Valley of California quickly becoming the perceived ideal destination to make a good living off agriculture.¹³  

The Central Valley Azorean population grew exponentially in three waves of migration: one in the 1840s Gold Rush, second in the 1910s to 1920s as dairying farms were established before immigration laws stifled entry, and third in the 1970s after a volcanic eruption on Terceira influenced the United States to lift the immigration ban.¹⁴ Upon arriving in the Central Valley, significant barriers prevented Azorean immigrants from accessing the land and opportunities they endeavored to find.¹⁵ Once established in the Central Valley, Azorean communities often fragmented, were disadvantaged in agricultural competition with other European ethnic communities (specifically Dutch), faced exclusion and alienation, and found that earning enough to own private property, though possible for Portuguese, was a formidable struggle.¹⁶

Difficulties in assimilating or even speaking with other California settlers positioned Azorean immigrants to transition from sheep herding to taking up and eventually become the majority dairying demographic within the Valley.¹⁷ This dairying came as a result of applying old trades in Azores to similar environments in California.¹⁸The perceived autonomy gained from owning a dairy farm was earned from the hard work of Azorean men saving up the meager wages as hired milkmen, often from Swiss-, Danish-, and Dutch-owned or Portuguese dairies. Over the course of a few years, Azorean communities developed together, and eventually, by the 1940s, three out of five dairymen in the valley were Portuguese and 70 to 75 percent of the dairy herds were owned by Portuguese.¹⁹ Overtime, Azorean men and dairying became synonymous, but this was not just the man’s story.

Historian Estellie Smith shares another side of the story in her article “The Portuguese Female Immigrant: The ‘Marginal Man’.” She writes that most Azorean migration was organized by female kinship networks. Much of the time mothers and other women were the ones who would do the labor and spend long hours in offices to get papers written, papers signed, certificates prepared, and documents stamped, finding out what information was required and working out how to obtain it. Often financial assistance from the place of departure and arrival must be secured; furniture and valuables prioritized, sold, shipped, or stored; arrangements would be made to care for elderly parents or other kin, for houses, lands, graves and even for the collection of rents.²⁰ 

In Azorean communities the networking and stratagem for emigration is referred to as the cuñha, which is to “make a connection” or more directly translated, “to open a door.” It also applied to immigrants in new communities who were attempting to establish social networks in a puzzling world. Cuñha-making was a commonplace, everyday occurrence with congenial links that may be used only a few times in one's life; but a migrant is constantly seeking potential cuñhas.²¹ 

III.

Hands and back perhaps sore and aching, with dozens of other chores around the house to complete before the work week at the dairies was to start again, these windows of time to play on Sundays proved challenging on many levels. And this does not include players who had to work after the game. An article published by the Fresno Bee in October 1967, signaling troubles with scheduling the 1967-1968 season for the San Joaquin Valley Soccer League: “The prospective Tulare and Los Banos teams consist mostly of dairy farmers who must take the milking schedules into consideration. They can play Sundays at home if the games start no later than noon. Games away from home must start at 10 a.m. Sunday is the only day they can play.”²² Nonetheless, by the end of 1967, the league admitted TAAC. The team's entry marked a new beginning for the SJVSL as well, having a record number of ten teams: Pioneers of Selma, Four Reyes of Los Palos, Malaga, G&F Packing of Kingsburg, Valley Industrial Laundry, Mexico Soccer Club (who went on to win the national title in the 90s), the Chihuahua Soccer Club, America Team, and Olympic Soccer Clubs.²³ Since its inception on October 5, 1958, the league had only registered no more than five.²⁴

SJVSL, having joined the California Soccer Football Association in 1962, elevated the status of the league by providing teams opportunities to play in state and national tournaments.²⁵ The excitement was warranted with the league drawing over a thousand spectators for playoff matches. Yet , the league struggled to survive.²⁶ It was not until 1967, that Tulare Angrense F.C. emerged with other new arrivals, such as the Pioneers of Selma, Four Reyes of Los Palos, Malaga, G&F Packing of Kingsburg, and Valley Industrial Laundry, to form a competitive league with several of the original teams, such as the Mexico Soccer Club, the Chihuahua Soccer Club, America Team, and Olympic Soccer Clubs.²⁷

A preseason game against Olympic resulted in a 6-0 embarrassment for TAAC. It did not bode well for their first year. There are several factors for their poor showing, but Fraga suggests that the team was simply more interested in fighting.²⁸ By December 4^th, 1967, however, TAAC registered their first win, beating Malaga 3-0 with two goals by Manuel Domingos and one by Alfonso Serra. It was their first win in two games. Seven days later, TAAC won their second game in a row over the Fresno Pioneers with goals by Carl Souza and George Caspillo.²⁹ At the start of the second round of the season, TAAC had three wins and four losses.³⁰With the league nearing an end in February 1968, TAAC continued to rack up the losses, but somehow managed to place third-to-last in the bracket. They also continued their fighting traditions, with an article by the Fresno Bee reporting the suspension and life probation of several players in Malaga v. TAAC match in February.³¹

With the start of the 1968-69 season announced, SJVSL instituted two division leagues for the first time. Results from the previous season would place the TAAC in the second division.³² However, this may have been the perfect grounds for fostering what would become one of the most dominant teams in the league for years to come. TAAC would be joining Hanford, Four Reyes of Dos Palos, and Malaga. Early in the season, all the proof was there. On November 11, 1968, TAAC kicked off their campaign with 8-0 win over Four Reyes, with Carl Souza and Alfonso Serra scoring three and four goals, respectively.³³ Five days later, Joe Robelo scored four goals while Carl Souza again scored three goals for another 8-0 thrashing, this time over Hanford.

By March of 1969, Carl Souza was leading the league with goals, and TAAC had won the second division league by eight points above second-place Malaga.³⁴ The Fresno Bee announced a game between division leaders Valley Industrial Laundry and TAAC. While it would not affect the standings, it would be a strong statement if TAAC were to win. TAAC and VIL eventually tied but Angrense’s 6-1-0 record of outscoring opponents of 40-7 certainly earned them a position in the first division.³⁵ Fraga, just fresh from the Azores, shares that there was a big celebration held at the T.D.E.S. Portuguese Hall.³⁶ It was a win for the community.

Over the summer break, Tulare Advance-Register published an article announcing that TAAC was still looking for young players to fill the roster. Interested individuals were to contact Al Serpa at his auto-repair shop. Al Serpa, was to be “aided” by John Morrison who was a “former player in Lisbon, Portugal.” Games would be played at Tulare Union High School District Stadium or at Western High School. Everything for the TAAC team was beginning to look up. Fans took interest increasingly in the games and even players, like young Joe Hermano Noronha, two years fresh into Tulare from St. Jorge Island, Azores, were celebrated on the local newspaper for his and his fiancé's wedding plans.³⁷

IV.

Paternal societies in Azorean communities were common and important institutions in the Central Valley.³⁸ Not only did they serve as cultural spaces, but paternal societies also offered necessary provisions, volunteer networks, and care services to these communities which continually lack federal or state aid.³⁹ Fraga explains that while TAAC became its own paternalist society, the club’s functions and services would not be centered at the clubhouse until 1969 when they bought the whole building at 1521 E Bardsley Ave, Tulare, California and expanded the space. At first established by players, a committee was formed to manage the club and create fundraisers for the team. The first members of Tulare Angrense worked incredibly hard to establish a “whole in the wall” clubhouse. But for several years, all the way into 1979, the clubhouse, perhaps due to its humble status, would be a periphery location to everyone but the team. First mentions of it would appear in a 1973 Tulare Advanced-Register reporting of someone who was caught stealing their trophies.

Prior to the use of the clubhouse, the Veteran’s Memorial Building Park at 1771 E Tulare Ave, Tulare, CA would host dances, fundraisers, and dinners for TAAC until 1979 when the clubhouse was officially formed.⁴⁰ For the seventh and eighth anniversaries in May of 1971 and the following year, the club hosted Portuguese teams from California like The Portuese Athletic Club of San Jose and Azoreans Club from Turlock. After the round robin tournament, dinner was followed by a dance. Perhaps the most unique, but traditional of the events thrown by the club was in 1975 with the sponsoring what Tulare Advanced-Register reported as two Mexican-style bullfights.⁴¹ Whether the bullfights were Mexican-style or traditional Azorean-style is indeterminable. As Fraga notes, there were certainly players and families from Mexico in Tulare, CA at the time, so there is plausibility in the event being a Mexican-style bullfight. Nonetheless, it perhaps represents the translocalism occurring more frequently in the 70s.

Fraga mentioned numerous individuals who sacrificed to create the club: Joaquin Corrier Sr, Joe Ferrera, and Al Souza. Strangely, unmentioned in the Tulare Advanced-Register articles of Tulare Angrense foundation was Manuel Fernando Souza, who Fraga notes as the most important individual for the club's formation. According to Fraga, not only was he out every week painting the sidelines on the Western Highschool Fields, away from his working hours as a mechanic, he put everything he had into making the club viable, including paying for registration fees from 1967-1970—eventually the team would pay him back in the late 70s. All players had to be registered with the association and every team had to join the California Soccer Football Association and along with fees for each player were entry fees for each season and various other charges to the Fresno Recreation Committee.⁴² Whenever he heard of a potential good player in the area, he would go out to watch and recruit them. When Al Souza passed in the mid-70s, Tulare Angrense changed the name of their May tournaments in his honor.

Fraga explained that “we supported the community, and the community did everything for us.” Over the next decade TAAC events and the clubhouse would be equally as important as the team. Serving as another paternal society, spaces fostered by the club would provide forums for mutual aid, family support, and community building. Members, mothers, wives, brothers, sisters, and fathers, paid dues, joining together to prepare for events and host teams from around the Valley for small-scale tournaments. In a way, cunhas were formed in these new clubs by wives, daughters, older members, and mothers of the players, making it possible for the team and club to survive. All the cooking and setting up of the functions were voluntary. It was like a family, Fraga explains. When someone walked into the clubhouse, they knew everybody. It was not just for Portuguese either. There were many nationalities that belonged to the space. A lot of immigrants played and continue to play, likewise their family remain active members of the clubhouse.

Traveling for games every other weekend created a significant financial burden. Dinners were sold as a great way to make money for the club and team. They also had a little bar, would sell food, and sometimes individuals would donate to the club. In 1979, they would have big dinners with people donating food for barbeques. At the dinners they would also have raffles. On occasion they would even drive to the dairies to see if they would be willing to donate a bull. Aside from the large events, they would work hard, from 5pm to one or two in the morning, selling sandwiches, tending the bar, or going into town to sell tickets for the games.

To this day, in retirement, members and fans will come in to play dominoes or cards. It became a place for the community to watch games and connect with friends and family. Through friendship and family, they each supported each other, no matter their creed or nationality. The clubhouse would become as important as the team, if not even more at times.

V.

Al Serpa was now the coach when Fraga joined Tulare Angrense Athletic Club in 73’. It also happened that in his first year, S.C. Lusitânia, the biggest team from the Azores, came to play TAAC. Fifty people showed up to try out for a spot on the team. As a sixteen-year-old vying for a spot against players ranging from seventeen to thirty, Fraga said that he would run every day and train on his own to get on the roster. Upon roster callup, he jumped as high as a streetlamp when he heard his name announced. On the day of the game, Fraga started on the bench. When Serpa asked Fraga if he played on the left side, Fraga replied it was his favorite position though he was right footed. He admitted he would have played goalie. Though TAAC would go on to lose 6-3, Fraga speaks with pride about scoring one of the three.

Despite the defeat, TAAC was just beginning to reach its full potential. With a second and even third division included in the SJVSL, TAAC managed to stay in the first for the last several seasons. Carl Souza was still leading the league scoring charts but the team was gradually reinvigorated with young talent. There was also growing participation of other nationalities in the team. Despite their successes, Fraga recalls that there were still half a dozen spectators on the sidelines. Games were still held on Sundays, with most of the TAAC players working full time jobs milking for dairies.

Everything changed quickly. TAAC went on an unprecedented run of league championships in 75’, 76’, and 77’. In 75’ and 76’ they downed Merced and Fresno International 1-0 respectively. They beat Merced Azteca 2-0 for the 77’ final with an Albert Souza header and George Fonseca indirect freekick.⁴³ Fraga ascribes much of TAAC’s successes to the coaches. First was Fernando Mattos from the Azores who took them to their first title, followed by a Brazilian coach named Larson. With the rise in recognition, players would travel good distances to play for TAAC. Getting stronger and stronger, tryouts were highly competitive. Fraga said that starters would play hurt because the subs were so talented. “You don’t want to give that guy on the sideline a chance.”

By the time TAAC won the league in 77’, a semiprofessional Northern California Premier League was forming in South San Francisco. Later that year it was confirmed that TAAC would be the first team from the Valley to be included in the Premier League. The league offered a new prestige and popularity to the team. The fanbase grew to 500 to 1,000 people at home games. Travels would take them all the way to Southern San Francisco and away game fans would join players in two packed buses.

The new league also rendered new and real stressors and expenses. These were especially demanding excursions when the team moved to the semiprofessional division. In the Premier League, they had to move to the Tulare stadium. With the stadium there came expenses for lighting, coaches, locker room access, and referees. Fraga stated that fans would pay for the coaches.

After winning the SJVSL in 77’, coach Tony Semois was hired to take TAAC to match their new status. The Premier League was a challenge for TAAC, who had been used to dominating games regularly. The clubhouse would throw dinners and fundraisers to help pay for the coaches and all the new expenses incurred. Several of the players were being asked to join Allstar teams, playing as guests in leagues up in Northern California, and even invited for games to Brazil. “No one ever signed with another team, ever,” asserts Fraga. They were TAAC through and through.

After two years under Semois, he contacted Rory Callaway from Liverpool (“A hard nose player”). Fraga recounts that on one of the first days of Callaway's tenure it was pouring rain. Callaway exits from the Lockeroom wearing a sweatsuit while carrying a bag of soccer balls. One of the players whispered, “This guy’s crazy.” Callaway answered by claiming that after a third whistle the team better be ready. As the team hustled to get their trainers and boots on, the whistle blew a third time. They were all late, so Callaway made them run the whole practice. In a meeting after, Callaway asked, “Boys, do we play in the rain?” In chorus, they replied “We do!”

Callaway was strict, assertive, and asked a great deal from his players. Fraga states that he was the first coach to change their Latin touch to a long ball game. He also changed the mentality of the players and the dressing room. Also, hearing about soccer in Europe inspired them to play better and train harder. When practice ended, they would practice more. Everyone would practice as well on their own.

It is a bit difficult to determine, but TAAC’s participation in the Premier League lasted until 1985 until the team disbanded. In that time, they won they had won the Champions Major League Division (CMLD) in 1982. Perhaps the aging players and other stressors culminated in their dissolution. Fraga states that they were never paid and that all the players worked long hours while also playing on the team. To him, while the pressure and challenges continued, the bond developed between the players only grew stronger. Tulare Angrense comprised of many nationalities and ages, and all were family to him. Anytime anyone needed support, whether it was the player or their family, they would be there for each other. Fraga shares, “If I had to go back, I would do it all over again.”

VI.

While Tulare Angrense was still at its height in the Northern California Premier League, in 1980, SJVSL, affiliated with the California Soccer Association-North, founded an under-23 league to improve high school and college age players within the region.⁴⁴ Announced and created by newly elected program representative, Ed Baladjanian, this would be the first of many initiatives outlined by SJVSL in the coming years that intended to change the league’s structure. Two years later, Baladjanian made public this program after a “silver anniversary” held at the Fresno Convention Center Exhibit Hall. A Fresno Bee article conveys the league’s intents of rebuilding a recent version of the league, one that would provide avenues for young high school talent to join California-specific semiprofessional teams. On that day, he saw the current state of the senior league as a means for poor-performing students to become referees and coaches. Critical of the “pro-leagues,” such as the North American Soccer League, Baladjanian was set to develop a more resilient structure for a statewide “franchise” of new semipro teams.

By 1985, while SJVSL was rebuilding and expanding their program, TAAC stopped playing and fell into dormancy for the next decade. In its state of perdition, waking finally in 2018 to make a failed attempt at joining the United Premier Soccer League, the club remained under, what Fraga claims, a series of indifferent and lost owners. While struggling to conjure a team, the clubhouse was beginning to garner the headlines. In 2003, a neighboring community was activated to close the club down after a murder was allegedly associated with the party at the clubhouse. After a 4-2 vote, Tulare Planning Commission amended their permit but with a stipulation that they must close at 9pm due to continued complaints about noise and other problems.⁴⁵ 

Fraga and several of the aging members of Tulare Angrense continued to play into their forties, but in an unspecified 40-and-up league. They still practiced and competed but due to repeated injuries, growing children, and other adult stressors, to a lesser degree. At some point in his forties, choosing to retire the cleats, Fraga became a full-time bus driver and served the club as the director of the co-ed league. The co-ed league became a popular avenue for Fraga, other old teammates, and his siblings' children to play. Under his tenure as a director, there was a new soccer campus and improved facilities. Efforts were made to generate more youth interest in the system, and to, as Fraga says, “To keep them off the streets.” 

As TAAC continued their rebuild, with over 400 members, the clubhouse continues to be a staple of the community. In the recent 2016 European Championships, one that Portugal had ended up winning, the clubhouse was packed with supporters. Fraga reminisces that despite the enduring struggles, many of the youth players went on to play for semiprofessional teams like Fuego. Others became attorneys, engineers, and milkers. Fan support has gone, but Fraga relishes the spirit and community of the clubhouse and continues to fight for the reformation of the team’s status.

VII.

Saudade 

Eu amo tudo o que foi
Tudo o que já não é
A dor que já me não dói
A antiga e errônea fé
O ontem que a dor deixou,
O que deixou alegria
Só porque foi, e voou
E hoje é já outro dia.

—Fernando Pessoa⁴⁶ 

The Portuguese term saudade connotes a profound nostalgia for an attainable and even fantasized place, depicting tension between joyful memories and a melancholic disposition engendered at a moment of recollection.

Playing on grass fields and with access to equipment felt like the biggest gift to Fraga as he approached a practice for the TAAC team in 1973. Some of what he experienced in the United States might have been similar when he arrived with his family in 1968. They were farming villages of about 2,000-3,000 people and there were many Azoreans, but there were certain marked differences.

Fraga states that back on Terceira, they would play pick-up games on cobblestone, often barefoot near the local church. “Anywhere we could play,” he reminisced. Their only access to nice fields was to view games through the gates of the professional Angrense team or to sneak into the stadium to watch a match in the city center. “As soon as the gate opens, we’d rush ourselves in,” he said. They would not be able to catch all of them. Other methods of gaining entry were to ask strangers to pretend they were relatives.

Before these pick-up games they’d gather at the shoemaker to listen to radio broadcasting professional games on the mainland. More important than the shoemaker for Fraga was the local priest who would teach them how to head the ball and loan them jerseys when they went to the other villages. Fraga recalls his local boyhood teams were formed in neighborhoods, and they would walk four to five kilometers to play other villages every Sunday. These games would be organized by friends of family. Being so immersed in the game, they returned home late, facing then inevitable remonstrations and threats from their parents. Yet every Sunday they would go out and do it again.

Playing on the streets and occasionally fitting in the various levels when numbers were needed, were the only modes of playing on the island. He often marvels at the difference between his time playing on the Azores and what his conception of soccer became in the United States. Eventually, several of his friends in the Azores played for the club programs, but when asked Fraga would not trade that for his move to Tulare.

Fraga, in 1973, came to practice with his brother at Tulare Angrense and was asked to join the team despite being much younger than the average player. Playing soccer at the age of sixteen went against his father’s belief that he should wait until he was eighteen. But he and his brother negotiated with their father and eventually he conceded. This gesture of approval proved to help his father down the line. Working long hours a day at the dairy, Fraga and his brother proposed that they would stay with the team if they got his dad a new job. TAAC members helped to get Fraga’s father a new position at Dairymen's Cooperative Creamery which proved to be much easier on his body and gave him more time off to watch his sons play and volunteer at the clubhouse.

In 1978, at the age of 21, Fraga returned to the Azores to play friendly matches against semi-professional and amateur teams on the islands. He was excited to visit family that he had not seen since he left and to connect with old friends who were now playing on the islands’ professional teams. On arrival however, Tulare Angrense first experienced some derision for being from the United States. But they proved themselves by winning three of the four games. Fraga recalls that even though they played on a dirt field, there were 5,000 fans watching and the music from his childhood played as TAAC entered the stadium. Fraga reminisced, “You thought you were playing on the best [field] the world.” The Azoreans bonded with their American brethren, forging a comradery that would bridge the soccer communities from California to the archipelago through the beautiful game.

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