This is a fun week in Columbia, the start of Rotary soccer. Uniforms are clean, relatives are on the sidelines with cameras in hand, and the kids are excited about the season.
It’s always impressive to me how much the community supports the league. That’s a nice thing to have, and it’s thanks to the vision of the Rotary Club to start the program more than 40 years ago when not much of anyone in the South had heard of soccer, much less played it.
It’s still a challenge getting coaches and referees who know the game (call me, by the way, if you have an idea of someone interested in calling some games this year), but overall the sport has gained its place in our cultural fabric. I expect Columbia High School’s soccer program, which will soon begin its second season, to continue to grow.
This is a new experience for me. In my youth I loathed soccer. A born conservative, my favorite was the tried and true National Pastime, baseball. Basketball – invented in the U.S., as you’ll recall, when Naismith hung that peach basket – placed second followed by football in third.
Soccer was a distant last, somewhere after shuffleboard and rhythmic gymnastics in my sporting hierarchy.
I don’t remember hearing much about soccer until the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994. That event seemed to raise the national consciousness about the sport. I recall Sports Illustrated for Kids, my preferred reading at the time, featuring a lot of the early American soccer stars like Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones.
I thought they were all wimps.
The faked injuries. The endless running around with seemingly little to show for it. The unnatural way of approaching the ball for a kick from the side. None of it appealed to me.
But somewhere along the past quarter century I’ve gained a grudging respect for the game that is so beloved in much of the rest of the world. For one thing, we’ve had a national obesity epidemic spring up.
The main culprit is the lack of activity levels among young people. Think about it; we’ve always eaten unhealthy in this country: butter biscuits and bacon, cheeseburgers and fries, milkshakes and Oreos. But we didn’t start getting fat until electronics came along, as well as a shift in work habits where less people do manual labor. Hence why we’re so bulging now that there’s an overwhelming demand for those electronic carts at Walmart, not from the truly disabled but from those who are simply too big to walk around the store to buy more food. You know you’ve got a problem when you’ve reached that stage.
And soccer, no doubt, is a way to encourage activity. Columbia Academy head football coach Randy Butler, in speaking to the Rotary Club a few weeks ago, commended it for organizing the soccer league. He noted that football coaches tend not to think too much of soccer, but he appreciates that it’s something for children to do to keep them off the electronics and be outside moving. I feel the same way.
Also, there is a certain excitement in watching the World Cup, at least, and an admiration of the players’ skill and stamina.
Don’t get me wrong; I have no interest in watching for more than once every four years, and only then usually the final or if the U.S. qualifies. The low scoring is just too much for me. In what other sport is a 2-0 lead insurmountable? Ask any baseball manager if he’s feeling comfortable up two runs, even in the ninth inning with a lockdown closer on the mound. He knows he’s always a walk and hung curveball away from extra innings. And there’s no wasting clock; you’ve got to get those three outs one way or another.
Sorry, I got distracted there for a moment from my overall point that soccer isn’t so bad. So what if it isn’t on the level of baseball. What sport is?
But soccer brings a lot of good things to Columbia; for that, even this baseball fan gives it a tip of the cap.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com.
