Plot Twist Turns Script Into a Soccer League

All Richard Hamar wanted to do was write a screenplay. And he did.

But in the process, the Beverly Hills attorney devoted eight months of his life and a substantial amount of his family’s savings to creating, and bringing to Los Angeles, Colombia’s first all-girls soccer league--a cluster of teams that is not only his obsession, but an important plot line in his script.

The movie has not been made, but soccer enthusiasts can get a sneak preview of Hamar’s work today, when 16 of the league’s top players compete against the California Blues at Occidental College.

In the screenplay, titled “Estrellas,” the fictional, drop-dead gorgeous Colombian futbol star Antonio shuns his country’s sexist philosophies and travels from orphanage to orphanage to put together an all-girls soccer league--a kind of “Annie” meets “Rocky.” The real-life star, Hamar, 51 and balding, also combed Colombia in search of little girls who could kick. But he did so to cull ideas for the film.

Hamar’s journey was purely for research, but--like many things in movies--it began to take on a life of its own. While watching impoverished girls play soccer with the country’s top futbol coaches whom Hamar brought to the orphanages, the screenwriter and father of two developed an attachment that he had originally scripted for the fictional Antonio. And like Antonio, Hamar decided to form his own soccer league, which not surprisingly, he named Estrellas. (Born and raised in Ohio, Hamar’s only real ties to Colombia are through the law practice he shares with his wife, Maria.)

The girls in the Estrellas league are not orphans, but they all come from some of the poorest regions in the country, said Maria Hamar. One of the girls had been playing soccer on a boys team, but none of the other girls had ever been given the chance to compete because “that just isn’t done there,” she said.

Giving these girls a chance to prove themselves has been a gratifying experience, and “it’s so rare in life that you find something that you think is truly good,” said Richard Hamar, who refers to the league as his calling. “If you can do maybe just one thing in life that changes society, you should. You don’t really get those chances that often.”

The league’s April soccer championships in Medellin, Colombia, filled a large stadium to capacity, impressing many Colombians who had been skeptical about a girls competition. Soccer is already the country’s most popular sport, but after the Hamars’ games, girls soccer became an official national sport.

Now Richard Hamar hopes to make the girls an international sensation. The team of 9- to 13-year-old girls arrived last week in Los Angeles via donated airline tickets from Mexicana Airlines and visas and passports paid for by the Hamars. They poured off the plane in blue jeans and Estrellas T-shirts and almost immediately jumped into the Hamars’ pool. The rest of the week continued as a kind of kid heaven: Disneyland, Universal Studios, the beach and tons of donated goodies, including big bags of pricey Warner Bros. paraphernalia.

Hamar, who claims to have spent $100,000 of his own money on the league, concedes that he might have gone a little overboard: “I mean, I know what our [family’s savings] account balance looks like now, and I know what it looked like eight months ago.” But he said he will stick with the league for as long as he financially can.

“Anyway, this is not going to disappear,” he said. “It’s already too big.”

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And if the league gets bigger, Hamar hopes that he will have no trouble selling the tale of Antonio. The screenwriter’s agent is shopping the script around. Hamar envisions international premieres of his film coinciding with his “soccer festivals,” which include not only the games, but salsa and merengue bands and game and food booths.

“Wherever we open, the girls can go and play against the championship team of that country,” Hamar said. “This allows the Colombian people to get known.”

Hamar’s law practice has been representing Colombian clients for almost 25 years, and the couple offers legal advice to the country’s consulate in Los Angeles.

Through frequent business trips, Hamar said he has fallen in love with the country seemingly known more for its drug problem than for just about anything else.

Standing on his deck, with a view that extends from Malibu to the San Fernando Valley behind him and a pool full of splashing soccer players in front of him, Hamar said he hopes that his script and his league can give the country’s image a face lift.

“There are major problems in every country,” he said. “But [Colombia] has so many wonderful things . . . that you don’t normally hear about.”