Off the Wall
Santa Clara and Chico, California
W
hen Jan Eric Nordmo, President
and Founder of Off The Wall
Soccer in Santa Clara and Chico,
California, was in college in the early '80s,
he played indoor soccer at a facility not far
from the University of Washington.He loved
it. The feel of the turf beneath his feet, the
bright lights shining high above his head,
the scoreboard displaying the number of
goals he had scored all made him feel like
a star. One day he summoned the courage
to talk to the owner. Jan (pronounced Yon)
was interested in learning how the facility
made money. The owner explained that a
nearby business paid $65,000.00 a year
for their team to play every Tuesday night.
(The business was Microsoft.)
Jan had grown up in the San Francisco Bay
Area, home to companies like HewlettPackard, IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor.
If a facility could survive on the business of
one company, Jan thought, he could thrive
on the business of several.
6
In the late '80s, when Jan worked for his
dad's engineering firm, he thought about
how wonderful it would be if someone
would build an indoor soccer facility in
the Bay Area where he could play. He had
heard rumors that someone was building
one, but nothing came of them. Jan began
to think seriously of opening his own
facility. He traveled a lot for his job, so
whenever he visited Chicago or another
city with indoor sports facilities, he took
pictures and collected information.
A few years later, he finally had enough of
his men's soccer team's being denied field
time. "I opened my mouth one day and
said, 'You know what? I'm going to build
an indoor soccer arena,'" Jan recalls. "The
moment I did that, I thought, I'm either
going to do it, or I'm going to be a liar."
His words catapulted
him into it action.
After several false
starts, he finally found
a building that would
work and developed
a relationship with a
contractor. He signed
a lease in 1992 and
opened Off The Wall
Soccer in Santa
Clara in November,
1993—a stunning 20
years ago!
