For the first time in nearly 50 years, Davis Legacy Soccer Club co-founder and former Executive Director Ashley Yudin is spending his year on the sidelines as just a grandparent and mentor rather than as a coach.
Though he refuses to take much of the credit, it’s Yudin, 77, who helped turn Davis into the soccer hotbed that it is.
When he started as an AYSO coach shortly after relocating to Davis to work with the university, there were just two youth teams in the area. By the time he left AYSO to help found Legacy a little more than a decade later, there were nearly 1,500 kids enrolled in youth soccer.
Today Davis Legacy alone has more than 1,300 participants, with AYSO still going strong as well.
Without Yudin, who officially retired from coaching at the end of the last season, none of this would have been possible. It’s Yudin’s legacy that helped create the bustling soccer culture in Davis.
“He’s more than just a coach,” said Davis Legacy Executive Director David Robertson, who took over running the soccer side of the club from Yudin in 2017. “He’s everything Legacy strives to be, his impact has been massive on me and the community. It’s been a great journey. I’m always trying to fill his big boots. Every day I try to make the club better as he has done for the past three decades.”
Ashley Yudin moved to Davis in 1977 to take a job in the marine biology department at UC Davis and quickly looked to see what activities he could get his children involved in–he and wife Nancy would end up having four kids, including daughters Kelly and Sara.
Seeing a lack of opportunities for girls in youth sports, Yudin helped establish Davis AYSO in 1979 so Kelly, and later Sara, could have an athletic outlet.
“We were all interested in trying to get a sport for females aside from tennis and swimming and cheerleading,” he said. “I couldn’t see my daughter doing any of those.”
“The town lended itself to soccer,” Yudin added. “There were so many international kids who played soccer on campus when I got here. It was such an amazing experience because I was introduced to all of these communities and each one of them would invite me to their homes afterwards.”
After coaching AYSO for more than a decade, Yudin became involved with the Davis High girls soccer team, where Kelly and Sara would both eventually star.
Sometime in the late 1980s, after the Devils were beaten in the section semifinals by Kennedy, the victorious Cougars coach offered Yudin a piece of advice: Form a soccer club in Davis.
So Yudin and two others established the Davis Youth Soccer Association (now known as Davis Legacy) in 1990, originally using different fields in the area — including in Dixon — to host games.
Though the club faced some initial challenges in the community, Yudin and the rest of the leadership team established three goals for Legacy to accomplish in its first decade of existence: establish multiple competitive teams on both the boys and girls sides, win a State Cup title, and find and develop dedicated fields that would be solely for the club to use.
Unsurprisingly, Yudin helped Legacy accomplish all three, as Davis Legacy Soccer Complex opened in 1998 with three grass fields that hosted multiple boys and girls teams, many of which were successful in delivering those State Cup championships.
From there, the club continued to grow in size and stature under the tutelage of Yudin, who, along with many other leaders, helped Legacy to go from a handful of teams playing on three fields to 51 teams using the 16 fields that constitute the largest soccer complex in Northern California.
“That just shows you the growth in this town, but Davis is an easy town to have soccer in,” Yudin said. “It blossomed on its own. There are so many international people in this town and it was a blessing for them to have their kids be able to play soccer.”
During that growth period, Yudin continued to coach at the club, always leading at least one team while serving as Legacy’s director. At the same time, he stood at the helm for the Davis High boys soccer team, guiding them to six section titles in a 21-year career that would eventually see him inducted into the Davis High School Hall of Fame in 2017.
As the years went on, though, Yudin began to gradually step back from both DHS and Legacy, where he found successors in David Robertson to run the coaching aspect of the club and Justyn Howard to be in charge of finances and administration.
Despite his diminished role, Yudin remains grateful to the community in Davis that has embraced the sport ever since he arrived in town nearly half a century ago.
“Davis means a lot to me because I was there at the beginning,” he said. “It’s still going and going strong and that’s one of the things I strived for all through those years, making the best decisions possible to keep the club healthy, growing, and thriving.”
Through that club, Yudin has impacted thousands of lives throughout the years, many who still consider him one of their biggest role models.
“I met Ashley when I was 14 and he immediately became part of my extended family because he was interested in who I was as a person,” said Janae Braun, a former Legacy player and coach and former professional soccer player. “I’m so thankful for all the time we spent together–Ashley was the first person to encourage me to just be myself as a coach. He opened an incredible amount of opportunities for me in the coaching world, but also to meet other people who have impacted my life as well. Ashley taught me how to be curious in who my players were, that way I would be able to have a bigger impact on each player. It’s a fact that there isn’t a person in youth sports who has impacted more individuals to truly love the game and love themselves as Ashely has.”
Added University of San Francisco assistant coach Sam Reynolds, a Davis Legacy alum and former professional goalkeeper: “I can’t thank him enough, aside from my own parents, I don’t think anyone has had a bigger impact on my life in soccer. I was nowhere close to one of the better players on the team, but Ashley stuck with me and created an environment for a kid who needed some direction. I really found a home within the sport because of the environment Ashley created.”
Few have interacted with Yudin as much as Davis Legacy President Josh Lutzker, the longest-serving of his role in the club’s history.
“Ashley didn’t just start a club 35 years ago, he built a family,” Lutzker said. “Thousands of kids have learned to love soccer under him, yes, but more than that, they’ve learned to show up, work hard, have grit, and become better humans. Every player at Davis Legacy, whether he coached them or not, grew up better because of the Legacy family.”