A Look Inside of Stone by Stone, the Official Podcast of Edgewater Castle FC

Stone by Stone, a podcast aiming to connect Edgewater Castle FC (ECFC) and the community, looks to tell stories of the club, its fans and Chicago. 

Gareth Mullins, the Director of Communications for Edgewater Castle FC, enters his third year with the club. He says he’s eager to take on the role of hosting an episode of the podcast. Mullins says he hopes this podcast will show a new, more accessible side to the club.

“It's a window into what makes us Edgewater,” Mullins says. “Interviews with people on staff, players, and people in the greater Chicago soccer community will really explain what soccer really means to them as a person.”

Mullins will be joined by Chicago Fire FC’s Senior Director of Communications Jhamie Chin. Chin will talk about his role at the club and his hopes for the future of the Fire’s communications. Chin says he wants to grow local coverage of the team. 

“There have been some challenges with this,” Chin says, “given the team's performance, [the] team training out of SeatGeek and being farther out of the city.” 

“If we want the club to be more connected to the community, we can help to promote all of the good things that the club is doing to try to make more people aware of what is happening and hopefully create more fans,” Chin acknowledged.

When he’s not running the cameras, Tom Arnison, ECFC’s Chief Operating Officer, will occasionally take on hosting duties as well.

Arnison says he joined the club because he, “... always had a passion for the lower division games, …[There] was a club nearby and [I] reached out and asked to make videos of the club, and since then it’s snowballed.”

Arnison says that the podcast is a “... way for us to stay active on social media, in the community, during the months in which we aren't playing games. This is an opportunity for us to tell more stories about the club even if we aren't playing games.”

Andrew Swanson, Co-Founder and President  of ECFC, also takes on hosting duties for the podcast from time to time. 

Swanson is one of two ECFC founders. He has lived in Edgewater for 16 years, and cites his longtime residency as an inspiration for starting the club.  The podcast, in Swansons eyes, was a way to share with others what he sees in the neighborhood.

“It was just the recognition that our area of Chicago is a globally diverse and economically diverse community,” Swanson says. “And because of that, it was a really great place to try and see if we could build a semi-pro soccer club in an area where people came from so many parts of the world that care about the game so much.”

Swanson envisions the podcast providing a “.. platform in which people are involved with surrounding the game of soccer, and have the chance to talk about their own lives and explain how much the game has impacted their lives.”

Swanson says, “Whether it's a player or a coach or a journalist, everyone in any field is just a person with a story. And this is an opportunity for us to learn more about a lot of different perspectives surrounding the game.”