Life Goals
He was a soccer-loving kid from Wapato, Washington — and now Luis Carmona, ’17, ’22, works with the Seattle Sounders’ and Seattle Reign’s RAVE Foundation to give kids better access to play.
As an eighth grader at Wapato Middle School, Luis Carmona fell in love with Seattle Sounders FC in 2009, when they started playing Major League Soccer games. Having a “home” team fed his devotion to the sport, born on Yakima Valley playfields and nurtured in a family that bonded over watching soccer on TV.
Today his role at RAVE Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Sounders and Seattle Reign FC that aims to empower youth through access to sport, is a dream come true. As communications and development manager, Carmona, ’17, ’22, works with school communities throughout Washington to foster physical and mental health through play. “I get so eager to be able to hand out soccer balls and play with the kids,” Carmona says. “I was once that kid. If one student goes home and shares that soccer ball with their family and friends and maybe even plays with it on their own … It just reignites me.”
In a bold initiative to inspire young people and strengthen communities, RAVE Foundation is creating small community turf fields and hard-court mini pitches for pickup soccer play. They’ve already met their first goal, to build 26 small fields across the state before Seattle co-hosts the FIFA World Cup in 2026. One of these mini pitches, near Carmona’s hometown in Yakima, is sponsored by the UW. And RAVE is now planning 26 more community fields, making 52 total by the original 2026 deadline.
Luis Carmona poses with two of his nieces on one of RAVE's Yakima Valley mini pitches.
Four of the mini pitches are on Carmona’s home grounds in the Yakima Valley: two at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Union Gap and the other two at Barge-Lincoln Elementary in Yakima. After helping coordinate MLK Jr.’s mini pitches two years ago, Carmona saw how soccer emboldened his cousin’s daughter, on the field and in the classroom. “She lights up talking about it,” he says, noting that she’d previously been uninterested in the sport. “When we go out there, it’s a pretty clear message that this pitch, and soccer, is for everyone.”
As a kid, whatever you’ve got going on in your life, when you’re out on a field — for me it was playing soccer — you forget about it for a little bit. We just want to make sure every kid has that right to play.
RAVE’s ethos — that every kid has a right to play — resonates deeply with Carmona. Eight years ago, living with his parents and working in sales after graduating from the UW Foster School of Business, Carmona agreed to coach his little brother’s middle-school flag football team. But not enough kids had signed up, and Carmona wasn’t sure why. Then his mom posted in Spanish on Facebook and watched the questions roll in. Some families in the predominantly Spanish-speaking town had a hard time navigating the English-language registration instructions; others didn’t have a ride to practice. Carmona couldn’t let these barriers keep kids from playing, so he got to work on logistics and made it happen. His voice cracks talking about this — the spark that changed the trajectory of his life. “Everyone who wanted to play, played.”
Inspired and motivated, Carmona applied to the University of Washington again. He received a Husky Leadership Scholarship that paid his tuition for the UW College of Education’s yearlong Master’s in Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership program. As a graduate assistant at the UW Tyee Club — Husky Athletics’ philanthropic arm — he helped with events and programming. An internship then connected him with the Sounders. He was hired at RAVE after graduating in 2022. “The combination of my UW education and my internships prepared me for my career,” he says. “They connected me with the right people who were important advocates for my work ethic and capabilities in working in a career in sports.”
A proud double Dawg, Luis Carmona credits the UW with setting him up for his career at RAVE Foundation.
Bringing together the UW + Sounders, for the community
It’s a full-circle moment for Carmona when he gets the chance to coordinate on behalf of RAVE with the UW, which sponsored the pitch at Barge-Lincoln and continues to work with RAVE on programming for students there. Carmona gets to bring together the university and soccer club he loves, in service to the community where he grew up. In one of his favorite annual events, this spring the UW welcomed approximately 150 fifth graders from the two schools to campus for a day. In t-shirts proclaiming “In my future, I will be _____” — where the kids filled in aspirations such as “mechanic,” “doctora” and “soccer player” — they snapped selfies with the fossils at the Burke Museum, toured campus, met Dubs at Oak Hall and heard from current Huskies about why they chose the UW. For many of the elementary schoolers, it was their first visit to Seattle and to a college campus. They ended the day at a Sounders game, where they were acknowledged on-field and got to celebrate a 1-0 win over San Diego FC.
It was Barge-Lincoln’s third year of this Seattle field trip, and principal Tori Brennan says she’s seen a shift in how her students consider the future afterward. “To see the light in our fifth graders’ eyes as they experience a big city, college campus and professional fútbol facility is remarkable,” she says. “For so many years, we’d hear our fifth graders never truly looking beyond high school. Now, I see it in their horizon and in their trajectory.”
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Luis Carmona with dinosaur fossils at the Burke Museum
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Luis Carmona at Burke Museum with kids
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Luis Carmona playing soccer with kids
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Harry the mascot signing girl's t-shirt
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Two students smile in soccer stadium.
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Kids cheering in the stands of a soccer game
A UW partnership with RAVE Foundation brought Yakima Valley fifth graders to Seattle — where they toured campus, explored the Burke Museum, heard from current Huskies, met Harry and Dubs, and enjoyed a Sounders game at Lumen Field.
Carmona felt that same awe and delight when he came to the UW campus to visit his older brother, the first in their family to attend college. “The first time I heard about the UW and Seattle, it was so daunting,” Carmona says. “For kids in that area [where I grew up], it doesn’t even seem like an option. But the moment they come and see that there are people invested in helping them explore coming to the UW, who want to point them in the right direction — it’s so beautiful. They start to see themselves here one day, wearing that backpack and walking across Red Square. If we can get one kid who never thought about college before and may be the first in their family to go, it sets off a whole domino effect: Their relatives learn more about the UW, and their siblings want to go too.”
“If we can get one kid who never thought about college before and may be the first in their family to go, it sets off a whole domino effect.”
As powerful as this field trip is, Carmona says it means even more — to him and the community — when he gets to visit schools in Yakima: “I went to the UW, I moved to Seattle, I work with the Sounders and the Reign, but I’m back because I love the place, the community, the people.” When possible, he asks the kids questions in Spanish, “as a good reminder of not forgetting who you are.”
Carmona hopes Rave will one day build a playfield in his hometown of Wapato. “I’m a big advocate of building as many mini pitches as we can in that community, because I think they deserve it,” he says. “As a kid, whatever you’ve got going on in your life, when you’re out on a field — for me it was playing soccer — you forget about it for a little bit. We just want to make sure every kid has that right to play.”
Story by Chelsea Lin // Photos by Mark Stone and Jorge Azpeitia
Originally published June 2025
