Arbitrary, Elitist Barriers To Entry Exact A Price

When the World Cup was over last summer, the United States had finished dead last, causing a flurry of opinions about why Americans can’t play world-class soccer. Let me add mine.

Soccer was my first sport. When I was in high school, my family had cows to milk and chickens to feed. There was no time for sports. My boys, however, played every sport available and my wife and I went along for the ride.

Our kids are short, powerful and quick, and are South American by birth. In our family, soccer was king.

My coaching career began in the recreation league, long before I knew anything about soccer. Fortunately for me, I coached before an equally ignorant audience. The only thing that mattered was that we won consistently and everyone had a great time.

In those days, schools didn’t play soccer. It didn’t take long, however, until the world’s most popular game won acceptance as a high school sport. In a sense, those were our glory years. We knew in our hearts that by the time our kids reached high school, soccer would rule.

We never doubted there would be college scholarships, world championships and enormous envy from football and baseball coaches, as their best players forsook these sports for soccer. We would be on the cutting edge of this movement.

Our kids began select soccer with me as coach. The next year, my coaching career ended when two of our boys joined the River City Steelers. The Steelers were formed by a group of kids accepted by a Spokane Youth Sports team and subsequently kicked off for being too young. We spent the next three years kicking the daylights out of these older teams and enjoying every minute of it.

I suspect that every emerging movement has a defining moment or period that determines its ultimate success or failure. The late 1980s may have been such a time for American soccer. It was certainly the period when I began to notice the increasing elitism at the advanced levels of the sport.

We participated in select soccer, TAC track, Pony League baseball and AAU basketball. The track, baseball and basketball teams had one inexpensive uniform each and played in local leagues. Soccer teams had wardrobes and traveled from Yakima to Sandpoint for league games. One season of select soccer cost us twice as much as the other three sports combined and involved a hundred times as much travel.

The next level, Primer, played in a statewide league, which meant traveling to the coast every other weekend. Olympic development soccer practiced in Moses Lake and traveled the continent for tournaments. One man told me he budgeted $5,000 a year for his son’s soccer activities. The practical effect was that working-class kids quickly gave up soccer for more affordable sports.

The problem went beyond cost, however. Advanced soccer became a territorial affair where clubs owned the right to limit the number of teams and participants from “their” districts. At tryouts, adults who should’ve known better pretended to know which 12-year-olds were the best players. It never dawned on them that “the best” can change weekly with young kids or that those cut from the team would simply drop out of soccer. This exclusiveness continued under a structure that all but prohibited new blood.

In those days, for example, the Primer league consisted of 16 teams. In theory, new teams with approved credentials could challenge for places in the league. Only the bottom two teams could be challenged in a once-a-year tournament. To win the challenge match, these teams would borrow players from other Primer teams who didn’t want their friends knocked out of the league. The result was an inbred system that, despite good intentions, had no chance of developing world-class players. With this sort of system throughout the country, it’s no wonder American soccer has consistently failed to attract the best athletes or fully develop those it does attract.

I have nothing against yuppies, but for American soccer to succeed on an international level, it can’t continue to be dominated by upper-class, suburban, white kids. It has to be restructured so lower- and middle-income families have the resources to participate without relying on charity.

Get rid of statewide leagues that, by their nature, exclude those without comfortable incomes and lots of free time. Encourage new teams rather than perpetuating the restrictive club system.

Forget about European soccer tours for children. These are nothing more than travel agency promotions that reinforce the elitist image.

We don’t need more coaching clinics. We need more kicking boards and soccer goals at our parks and schools. Cut the cost and exclusiveness of soccer and we can begin to harness the talent and energy of millions of Americans who are structured out of the current system.

Then we can expect international success.