All you have to do is mention "the Indiana house" to NEFC’s 1999/2000 NPL team, and the laughs start. It’s nostalgia for two weeks from the summer of 2017 they’ll never forget, and for good reason. They ended with lifting a U.S. Club Soccer National Cup trophy. What happened before then, though, is where the wistful stories begin.
Rather than staying in a hotel — like most club soccer teams would when venturing to the Indianapolis area — NEFC rented a mansion of sorts, piling in a dozen or so players and their families. Days were marked by team meals, swimming in the pool out back, ping-pong matches in the game room, planning goal celebrations, and binge watching sessions of "Trailer Park Boys" on Netflix. They were, as forward Duncan Sutherland (Millville, Mass.) put it, the best of times.
"As much as soccer brings us together, I’m sure we’d all still be together and hang out with each other outside of it," said Sutherland, a high school junior who is a bonafide Division 1 prospect. "They’re awesome guys."
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