Soccer - "The Un- American Activity"

They played unorganized hockey...and some of them (cf the Staal boys) are still learning how to play the game on backyard rinks.

It'd be interesting to do an analysis of how many kids that get drafted in the NHL played their minor hockey in the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL) (the largest minor hockey organization in the world). Not many, because for those kids, the only hockey they know is the two or three practices and two games a week plus six tournaments a year.

 

I guess you could argue that kids have their whole life to learn about music or science or The Complete Marx Brothers...but a very short window of time to play competitive sports.

 

Look at the Dominican Republic baseball players. I don't think there are too many personal trainers over there for the little ones.

Before they get snapped up by the academies in their teens, they are playing baseball, or whatever form they can find, all day long. Without youth coaches, travel ball, and orange slices. Same with Brazilian soccer players.

Personal trainers and intense travel ball has replaced going outside and playing with your friends until it gets too dark.

 

You also could argue that there are a lot of kids who don't mind the regiment.

 

no mini vans either

 

I would absolutely argue that....my whole issue with this is the parents who create their own identity from their kids' activities.

My girlfriend has a son who wrestled varsity as a freshman...was supposed to start at varsity QB his sophomore year. Started getting back pains before the season....xrays showed a hairline fracture in one vertebrae. He could play again IF he took a year off to let it heal. My friend was in complete mourning...'This is our LIFE...our friends, our vacations...what a tragedy for our family!' She took him to three doctors trying to find one who would let him play...worst case he'd get injured and need surgery, but she was willing to risk it 'so this didn't break his spirit.'

Sick.

 

That's just it. It becomes everyone's life. For kids who play on travel teams or in a lot of tournaments mom and dad pack the whole fam into the minivan for the weekend and when the kids go to bed they get shitfaced with the other parents in somebody's room or in the lobby bar.

And if a kid is really good at something, whatever interests the other kids have go on the back burner while everyone focuses on Johnny PrepStar.

We had a kid on our team whose parents made a five-hour round trip to our Sunday afternoon home games every week for three and a half years until the kid was traded (dad would usually come alone to our midweek home games and any road games within four or five hours of home). He had a sister who was 13 or 14 at the time, too young to stay home on her own. And if she had any other interests she was out of luck. And as much as she loved her brother she had no interest in hockey. While her parents lived and died with every game she did her homework in the stands or slept.

 

Another reason for the death of pick-up games is the fear many parents have of their kids playing unsupervised and being abducted by degenerates. It's understandable that parents might be worried about that and one kid abducted and molested is one kid too many, but the fear is way out of proportion to the actual risk.
The only soccer, football and hockey I ever played was in pick-up games.

 

I think some parents are motivated by those fuzzy features you see during the Olympics.
Those ones where, usually a single parent, made some huge sacrifice to get her kid to swim practice. One of those two-hour, one-way trips because some coach had told them that lil' Johnny had some talent and 10 years later he takes home the gold in the Olympics.
Every parent thinks that it could be their kid.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with making sacrifices to help your child do something he or she wants to do.

The problem is when that activity becomes something you want him or her to do.

My oldest boy was playing novice hockey and was a pretty talented player, but it became obvious to me over the course of the season that he was only doing it because I wanted him to play. The next year, I asked him if he wanted to play and he said no, so he didn't sign up and he hasn't played since, unless it's pickup hockey with his friends.

His younger brothers have never expressed much of an interest in hockey so they don't play either. It's their choice. My job is to make sure they're able to do the things they're interested in, whether it's sports or stamp collecting or whatever.

 

Not as many anti-soccer columns as 2006, but here is one.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/06/10/lichtenstein-soccer-is-boring-tv-which-is-why-most-americans-dont-care-about-world-cup/

Does this mean America has embraced the game?

 

Soccer has definitely turned a corner from where it was 7 years ago in the USA. It has finally reached
the tipping point,