CHCCS student’s world cup display connects Chapel Hill through ‘universal language’ of soccer – The Daily Tar Heel

A world map stands displayed in the middle of the Chapel Hill Public Library, dotted with colorful stickers placed by visitors marking their predictions for the 2026 FIFA World Cup champion. 

For most, the display is a chance to support their favorite teams. For Chapel Hill High School junior Sahin Ozkan, the project’s creator, it’s an opportunity to help others experience the same sense of community that soccer gave him after moving to the United States.

Through July 20, visitors to the library can vote for their champions by placing a sticker or scanning a QR code to submit their predictions online. The interactive display, titled “Chapel Hill Kicks Off the 2026 World Cup: Soccer Around the World,” is the latest in a series of soccer-based community projects created by Ozkan, including free youth soccer clinics and a student-led soccer analytics club at CHHS. 

Each project has been created with the hope of showcasing what soccer has provided him since he moved to the United States: a community of diverse yet interconnected strangers.

When Ozkan moved to Chapel Hill from Turkey in 2018 as an elementary school student, he found it difficult to make friends with classmates who had already established friendships, especially while adjusting to a new language. Following him through every move in his life, soccer — what Ozkan referred to as “a universal language” — was the key to building community in Chapel Hill.

“For me, it was hard because I didn’t have any friends or nobody that I could really talk to,” Ozkan said. “So I just wanted to make this community work, bring everybody together — different cultures and from different places — to be one big family to help each other out, maybe have a friend to talk to.”

The idea for the display evolved since the beginning of the year, when Ozkan pitched other ideas to library staff that also focused on increasing community excitement about the World Cup. Initial ideas, such as a walking tour introducing visitors to the countries in the World Cup in the style of the library’s StoryWalk path, proved impractical, but library staff helped refine the concept into an interactive display that visitors of all ages could explore on their own.

Karin Michel, manager of youth and family experiences at the Chapel Hill Public Library, said Ozkan’s persistence stood out throughout the process.

“He stuck with it,” she said. “It wasn’t like, ‘I have this idea. Oh, that’s not going to work. Forget about it.’ It was continuing to think on it and suggest different versions of an idea until landing on the right one.”

Michel said library staff helped redesign graphics, pay for and print some materials and fine-tune the display so visitors could easily understand how to participate. 

The display’s organizers said turnout for the display has been exciting, with people of all ages interacting with the multimedia voting options and engaging in conversation about soccer and global culture. 

Ozkan’s passion for soccer and community building has been shown in previous projects like his free six-week Neighborhood Soccer Fun & Clinics, which have garnered the interest of around 40 young participants looking to learn about the sport.

Beth O’Donnell, a multilingual learner teacher at CHHS and the faculty advisor for Ozkan’s Soccer Analytics Club, attended the last practice session of his fall 2025 clinic. O’Donnell, who Ozkan said has been especially helpful in his growth, said his leadership was beyond what she would expect from a high school student.

“He had 25 elementary school kids looking up to him,” she said. “He’s leading this whole clinic by himself. It was freezing cold, and none of the kids wanted to go home.” 

Ozkan’s clinics end with collecting and delivering donated equipment from participating families to TABLE, an Orange County nonprofit centered around providing healthy food and nutrition information to children across the county. 

“I think providing access to resources, access to experiences is really transformative to community members,” O’Donnell said. “And I think that that’s what he’s doing: giving back to the community.”

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