Soccer Tennis

When Does a Game Become a Sport?

The idea isn't new. The opportunity may be.

For generations, soccer players around the world, from amateurs to professionals, have found ways to put a ball over a net. Professional players use variations in training. Friends play recreationally. Children improvise playing areas and boundaries.

Sometimes there is a net. Sometimes there is simply a line and an understanding: Keep the ball off the ground. Get it to the other side. Compete.

In 1996, Al Burzynski and Shane Murphy were inspired to create The Construction Zone, a fan-driven website covering the Columbus Crew, one of Major League Soccer's founding teams.

As supporters of the club, they were frustrated that their city finally had a major professional sports team, yet news and media coverage of "America's Hardest Working Team" remained limited.

The Construction Zone went beyond simply reporting scores. It featured original match reports, photography, exclusive content, and early experiments with streaming media at a time when limited internet bandwidth made delivering multimedia content online difficult.

Less than two years later, the Crew hired Burzynski and Murphy to maintain the team's official website. Their work would eventually become part of SportsNet Ohio.

While covering a Crew practice, Burzynski noticed players engaged in something different: soccer tennis. He had developed a strong rapport with Crew captain Thomas Dooley, who joined Columbus in 1997 after a distinguished playing career in Germany, and asked him what the players were doing.

It was a simple question. Neither could have known where the conversation would eventually lead.

Soccer-over-the-net games, training drills and recreational activities had existed for generations in different forms and under different names, including football tennis, futnet and nohejbal.

That history matters. The Soccer Tennis story isn't dependent on pretending the past never existed. It raises a more interesting question:

What happens when someone looks at something people already know and sees what it could become?

"Innovation doesn't always begin by inventing something the world has never seen. Sometimes it begins by seeing what the world already has and recognizing what it could become."
— Al Burzynski, APR

That is the question behind Soccer Tennis.

Seeing Something More

The conversation that began around a Crew practice field grew out of a relationship between Dooley and Burzynski that now spans nearly 30 years. Over the decades, they continued returning to the same idea: Could something commonly experienced as a training drill or recreational game become something more, a sport with its own rules, organized competition, governing structure, and identity?

Like many ideas, this one had to wait. Careers continued, professional responsibilities grew, resources were limited, and the timing was never quite right.

Still, the idea never completely went away. By 2023, the timing began to change.

Burzynski and Dooley started assembling a team to explore whether the idea they had discussed for years could actually be built.

Their vision extended beyond creating another competition. They wanted to explore the development of a hybrid sport that could help develop future leaders on and off the pitch while incorporating sports diplomacy, corporate social responsibility, and service into its foundation.

For Dooley and Burzynski, that broader purpose is personal. Both benefited from opportunities that took them well beyond where their journeys began, and both came to believe those opportunities carried a responsibility to pay something forward.

Burzynski’s own path reinforced that belief. An Army veteran and 2019 inductee into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame, he has carried a commitment to service throughout his military and professional life.

More importantly, their shared outlook helped shape the vision for Soccer Tennis: Sport can be more than competition. It can bring people together, create opportunities and provide a platform for service.

From the outset, that vision has included sports diplomacy, corporate social responsibility and leading by example — all grounded in a simple belief: sport should also serve others.

Those experiences helped shape a shared belief: Sport can be more than competition. It can bring people together, create opportunities, and provide a platform for service.

That is why sports diplomacy, corporate social responsibility, and leading by example have been part of the vision for developing Soccer Tennis as a sport from the outset, rather than something added later.

But turning that vision into a sport required answering a more fundamental question.

Early research into Soccer Tennis identified a basic challenge: the activity was familiar, but it was often experienced as a recreational game or soccer training drill rather than as a standardized competitive sport. Formats and rules varied, and the competitive concept the project's organizers envisioned lacked a unified identity and governing structure.

Interviews with subject-matter specialists, including athletes, coaches and analysts, also informed the research.

The effort extended into academia, where Pace University students examined the Soccer Tennis concept under the guidance of Leigh Klein, a clinical assistant professor of marketing in the Lubin School of Business. The students later presented their findings to Burzynski and the Soccer Tennis Federation (STF).

That work reinforced a question Dooley and Burzynski had been exploring:

Could elements of soccer and tennis be developed into a distinct, organized hybrid sport?

In fact, Dooley had already begun exploring that possibility. As founder of the American Soccer Tennis Organization (ASTO), which operated from 2006 to 2013, he sought to move Soccer Tennis beyond the training ground and recreational play toward organized competition.

Those efforts moved into public view in 2006 with the U.S. Soccer-Tennis Invitational at UCLA's Los Angeles Tennis Center. The international exhibition brought together former international soccer players representing eight nations and put the Soccer Tennis concept into a competitive event setting.

But demonstrating people could compete was only part of the challenge. Developing Soccer Tennis as a sport required something more: consistent rules, standards, competitive structure and, ultimately, a governing framework capable of supporting the sport's growth.

Drawing on lessons learned from years of experience working with amateur sports governing bodies, including the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC), Burzynski and his team conducted the necessary research and filed the paperwork in 2023 to establish the Soccer Tennis Federation (STF).

Created as a not-for-profit governing body, STF provides the structure needed to help Soccer Tennis develop as an organized sport. The federation works to set standards, maintain the rules of play, and support competition and development.

Its mission also reaches beyond competition. STF seeks to bring people together from around the world, including underserved communities, members of the armed forces, veterans and their families, and athletes who participate in adaptive sports.

Just as importantly, the organization aims to develop future leaders and create pathways for upward mobility by helping people carry lessons learned through sport, military service and life experience into meaningful careers and professional opportunities.

The distinction is important. Dooley's contribution does not depend on claiming he invented the basic idea of putting a soccer ball over a net. The larger story is the effort to take a familiar concept and help develop it into something structured, repeatable, and capable of supporting organized amateur, collegiate, and professional competition.

Someone has to build the structure around the idea.

Dooley brought a rare depth of experience to that challenge. A National Soccer Hall of Famer and founder of ASTO, he had experienced the game as a professional player, U.S. Men's National Team captain and international coach.

That perspective, combined with Burzynski's experience in organizational development, communications, public service and sports, helped move the conversation beyond whether Soccer Tennis could be played.

The question had become whether it could be built.