Having a ball: 4 CCHS students working World Cup sidelines

Before a global audience, they must be virtually invisible.

Four Acton-Carlisle students — Camy Cox and Emily Perrotta, who recently finished their sophomore year, and Annie Beal and Aidan Cobbe, who were freshmen — are among the Massachusetts high school soccer players on the Powerade Ball Crew, which is working at the FIFA World Cup games at Gillette Stadium (called Boston Stadium during the tournament) in Foxborough.

“It’s cool,” said Cox. “We get to be on the field. The stadium is packed, even in the upper deck. We’re in front of billions of people watching all over the world.”

The Powerade Ball Crew’s job is basically to keep the game moving, making sure that when the ball goes out of play, there’s another ready.

While a typical high school or college game has two people performing that function, one on each sideline, it’s different at the sport’s highest level.

“There’s a lot more to it,” Cobbe said. “It’s a key part of the game. We enable the players to keep playing.”

Satellite technology

During each match, 12 members of the Powerade Ball Crew are stationed around the field, each responsible for one or two of the 19 game balls. When not in play, the balls rest on cones — which are charging stations.

“It’s really very different,” Cox said. “Each ball has a [GPS] tracker in it. When it goes out of play, you put the ball on the cone a certain way. If the ball goes into the stands, they have to get it back to the field to put on the cone. There are times when fans try to take the ball, but security gets it back from them.”

The four CCHS students received the opportunity after receiving an email from their coaches, Peter Fischelis and Ray Pavlik, who learned about the program through the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer. They put players’ names in a hat, and each coach drew two names.

On May 11 and 12 they received extensive training at the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center outside Atlanta, along with about 150 other ball crew members from the United States and Canada.

‘Keep a straight face’

Though Powerade Ball Crew members are on the field in front of everyone in the stadium and a worldwide television or streaming audience, they must remain as inconspicuous as possible. That was the focus of much of their training.

“A representative of FIFA told us we can’t cheer during the games,” Perrotta said. “We have to keep a straight face.”

Said Beal: “We have to run out onto the field in a certain order. We go out there before the players and leave after them.”

They also must maintain a certain posture, hands behind their backs, when not retrieving balls or placing them on the cones.

Before every game, Powerade Ball Crew members depart on a bus from a hotel in Dedham and arrive at the stadium six hours before the match and leave about an hour after the final whistle. They have their own stadium locker room and wear matching Adidas apparel and shoes.

Much like the referees, if they do their jobs well, nobody will notice them, but none will ever forget being a part of the world’s biggest sporting event.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be on the field,” Beal said.

Said Cobbe, “I’m super-excited.”