I hate soccer

hey little league daddy, glad to see you were "saved." go preach to someone else dipshit.

 

Playoff basketball deserves the bulk of the coverage at this moment -- especially over what's most likely a non-conference friendly. I believe most soccer parents understand this as long as the sport gets coverage later in the season compared with the stick-and-ball sports.

I suspect soccer has been getting the short end (long after basketball playoffs end) at this shop for quite some time.

 

Let's see. In soccer you dribble a ball, try to score and then play defense.
In basketball, you dribble a ball, try to score and then play defense.
Huh.
Not a big fan of soccer, but it is popular and played at a high level among the preps. It does get a fraction of the crowd of football, sometimes rivals that of basketball, but sure as hell blows away baseball in terms of attendance. So you adjust to your coverage area.

 

I can't say I'm a huge fan of soccer, but I don't hate it.

I do, however, hate soccer parents.

Then again, I hate parents in every other sport, too, so it doesn't exactly put soccer parents in elite company.

As for coverage, I think my section does a good job of getting features in on local programs, and we try to get to at least a handful of big games during the regular season. Once the playoffs hit, we tend to follow the one or two best teams in each class and take call-ins for the rest.

Do we give other sports more coverage? Sure. Football and basketball get more attention -- but they also get much bigger crowds. I went to a state semifinal in girls' soccer a year or two ago and saw about 400 people in the stands, if that. Go to a girls' basketball state semifinal and the crowd is at least two or three times bigger. And let's not even compare those crowd sizes to football or boys' basketball.

Having said all that, I've never considered soccer unworthy of coverage. No sports editor should. Like it or not, it does draw interest, and we're here to give the readers what they want.

 

Our football people aren't filling 20,000-seat gyms. Our soccer people, usually twice (but at least once) a year, will get 1,500 to 2,000 people at a game. It's always between the two big rivals in the area. The regular season meeting, if at night, gets a big draw. The postseason meeting, which has happened four of the last five years I think, draws in the 2,000 range ... probably because a trip to the state finals (aka elite eight) is on the line.

 

Now, Tomas. Behave yourself or I'll send my buddy boots to your back door.

 

All 10-year-olds do is run around and kick.

 

At the risk of shotglass telling me where to go, I'll post my reservations about high school level soccer here:

1. About 10-150 people attend high school soccer games, postseason notwithstanding (then it's about 300-500),
2. Soccer is perhaps the most physically demanding sport there is,
3. In my state soccer has elite levels in private club organizations where they play year-round. Some of these clubs are hooked into clubs in England, Spain and Germany where the kids go in the summer to train,
4. These elite clubs are not cheap, and you notice the poorer high school soccer kids don't play club soccer, but opt for summer city leagues until high school starts,
5. Soccer is boring because I realize I don't understand it, and most high school games are 12-0 blowouts, what do you write about that?
6. Down here in the Deep South, mommas and daddehs want little Johnny and Little Susie to play soccer because the black kids dominate every other sport. Only soccer is lily white (although baseball starting to get that way),
7. Soccer is played too often in a given week to work with most newspapers' deadlines, therefore I've always focused in on postseason soccer and relied on coach call-ins during the season. Parents don't like the way I've covered soccer, but they can always buy a press and get in the newspaper business.

 

That's the subject of an enterprise piece I always wanted to write, but never got around to. I also worked in the South years ago, and was taken aback by the unofficial segregation. Even at schools that were 50/50 black and white or a majority black, the baseball teams were 95 percent white.

I know this goes to a larger trend around the country, but I haven't a story about that at the high school level.

 

I don't know that it's so much segregationist as that some parents may feel their suburban kids have a better shot at "starring" in sports like soccer and swimming and lacrosse or whatever.

But I have covered schools in the South that are fairly well mixed as far as races but you go to a high school football game and all the white people sit in the west 2/3 of the stands and all the black people sit in the east third.

That was a jaw dropper for me.

 

On the enterprise piece about whites dominating baseball, regardless of level (pro, college, high school), a writer at a Texas newspaper did that maybe three years ago. It was like 25" story that listed how many black players played at UT-Austin and various other NCAA schools, and how many black players were in the major leagues. It was a great story.

I'd think that the white kids in my area excel in baseball thanks to their opportunities to receive private coaching and to attend expensive college baseball camps in the summer. Also, as young as 8 years old, kids at the city rec leagues are divided into levels, elite and ordinary. Elite kids get to travel the country playing, while ordinary kids might play 15 games in the summer and then they're done.

Segregation in the South today is very much a voluntary phenomenon, however on specific athletic teams, it comes down to ability.

Consider this school in my area that has an ungodly 60-game high school win streak in football. For the past seven years that team is 100% black, but the school is split 60-40 white to black. That school's baseball team is 100% white, and its basketball team is 90% black.

I hear last summer when the football team had open tryouts, not one white kid attempted to tryout. Many parents in that school's area send their kids to private schools to play football or basketball. If they have to stay at the public school, then the parents probably begin nurturing their children toward baseball and soccer.

I spoke with a former football player from that school the other day (he works with me). I asked him if that school had a 100% black football team when he went there. He said he and maybe 15 whites were on the team, and added that he played basketball until his senior year. He said he quit because he was the only white player on the basketball team. So sometimes it doesn't have to do with ability, but racial sensitivities.

One time I asked an old retired football coach about the racial distribution of his teams. He simply said that the black kids have speed and the white kids don't. He said there he would always pick the kids that had speed.

At other schools in my area, some which are 90-10 white to black, there'll be 65 black kids on the football team and almost every white member plays on the JV or starts as an offensive lineman. It's crazy.