Going for the Gold

Following a successful season, the city’s first professional futsal team will compete in the championship game this weekend.

Team owner David Fresquez started the Santa Fe Gloom—a nod to Zozobra—in December 2023. Now with five wins under its belt, the team will finish off its first season April 13 and compete in Denver against the Colorado Futsal Academy, another member of the National Futsal Premier League that also posts five victories but leads slightly in standing. While Fresquez says the season exceeded his expectations because “this time last year, we didn’t have a team and we didn’t have a venue,” the possibility of a championship was never far off if given the opportunity to get there.

“I think it’s a long time coming for the Santa Fe community because we have so many talented players here,” Fresquez says. “It was just a matter of time that this was going to happen.”

The Santa Fe Gloom marks Fresquez’s second attempt in recent years at a new sports operation. At the beginning of 2023, he tried to create an indoor soccer team to join the Major Arena Soccer League 2 using the Genoveva Chavez Community Center’s ice rink in partnership with the City of Santa Fe, but city officials quickly axed that plan amid outcry from skaters and citing financial constraints.

With those issues in the rear view mirror and a championship straight ahead, Fresquez says the focus moving forward is “all about mental toughness for our guys.”

“Denver’s extremely good, and we can compete with them,” Fresquez says. “We’ve just gotta play a perfect game. We’re just telling our guys to be real patient, continuously talk through plays and have open communication.”

Victory or not, the team owner—who also has his own in-home senior care business and serves as the executive director of the Santa Fe Hispanic Chamber of Commerce—says he hopes the stage is set for generations to come. Other teams have already taken notice of “the great product” that is the Santa Fe Gloom, meaning the opportunity to recruit nationally and regionally could arise in the future, Fresquez adds.

“I think the sky’s the limit, and we’re creating paths for kids to have role models in the community,” he says. “They can now say, ‘I could be in the Northern Soccer Club, I can go to high school, I can go to college and I can come back and play for the Santa Fe Gloom.’ So I think it’s finally coming full circle.”