Jerry MacFarlane, Wrangler of Volunteers, American Youth Soccer Organization

As someone who has climbed to the upper rungs of the AYSO organizational chart, Jerry Macfarlane can tell you that the key to power is sometimes, well, a key. On any given Saturday morning, more than 630,000 American kids strap on their shinguards, lace their cleats and line up for kickoff. They do so mostly on soccer fields at public schools, which generally are locked up tight on weekends. For players with pregame jitters and parents with empty Starbucks cups, an unlocked restroom can be an incomparable relief--and perhaps the best measure of an AYSO commissioner’s power of persuasion.

Public-school principals don’t part easily with restroom keys. And overworked parents aren’t always eager to coach, referee or fill gopher holes in fields. But it’s the wheedling of Macfarlane and other volunteer leaders that makes the American Youth Soccer Organization go. Its success--the number of registered players more than doubled from 1988 to 1998--has as much to do with sweet talk as with soccer’s burgeoning popularity.

Macfarlane, 40, of Rancho Palos Verdes, oversees seven divisions of boys ages 4 to 19 as the Region 10 Boys Commissioner. He also is a division commissioner overseeing four leagues of boys under 8. This amounts to thousands of kids. About eight months before fall opening day, Macfarlane recruits league commissioners who organize teams, create game schedules and enlist coaches. The coaches, in turn, persuade parents to dog uniform and trophy distributions, make banners, attend referee clinics, maintain the playing fields and, most important, bring snacks.

Macfarlane also makes sure that AYSO volunteers understand the organization’s motto: Everyone Plays. It’s his job to rein in--and sometimes yank--coaches who berate referees or players, dominate lesser teams in lopsided victories or otherwise misunderstand their mission. “It’s a pretty healthy thing to hear a former professional soccer player like Greg Delgado say it’s not about teaching soccer, but about teaching fair play,” Macfarlane says.