Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990 TAG: 9005260029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Small boys ran across green grass bordered by green trees. Blue clouds filled a blue sky above blue mountains. From nearby came the thwock of an unseen tennis racquet on an unseen tennis ball.
It was the gorgeous conclusion to a cool spring day, the kind that baby boomers associate with their first exposures, in the '50s, to organized baseball.
The boys of Wednesday were playing, not baseball, but soccer. Instead of slamming wooden bats into pitched hardballs, they slammed their small feet into black-and-white soccer balls and sent them sailing.
They were first-year players on the '80 Green team of the Roanoke Valley Youth Soccer Club, preparing for this weekend's Crestar Festival Soccer Tournament. They were 9- and 10-year-olds trying to master the intricacies of what remains, in spite of years of promotional efforts, a sport little known to the public at large.
They are the future of soccer in this country - which is, by the way, one of the few where soccer does not dominate all other team sports.
They are the reason that soccer organizations and potential advertisers still see the game as full of promise in the United States.
Soccer has too much going for it, boosters say, not to catch on eventually. Kids like it for simple reasons.
"It's fun," said Scott Katz on Wednesday evening, "because it's got a lot of action in it and you get a lot of exercise."
Adults like it because it is safe compared to many other team sports.
"You have physical contact, but your concentration is on the ball, not on the player," said Rick Kirk, Scott's coach. "There's no advantage in soccer to taking a guy down on the ground."
Others like it because, on the rec league level, if not in tournaments, everyone on the team gets to play at least half a game.
Moreover, soccer is simple, as games go. The point is to kick the ball into the opponent's net, and to prevent him from kicking it into yours. The field is big, the action continuous.
With 11 players on a side, a shy child can participate as much as he wants without drawing undue attention to himself. An aggressive one can race up and down the turf, spending his energies and, usually, harming no one.
"It doesn't take size," said Kim Viera, the soccer coach at Hollins College. "It doesn't take bulk strength. Any child can play just about any position. It's non-stop, with no timeouts, so there's no opportunity for coaches to call time out to yell at the kids."
Critics say soccer is boring. Enthusiasts say it's subtle; as with base- ball, the more you study it, the more fascinating it becomes.
Sport of the '90s?
The Soccer Industry Council of America wants to make soccer the team sport of the '90s in the United States, according to Sporting Goods Business magazine.
Soccer publicists are counting on print and broadcast coverage of the World Cup this year from Italy and in 1994, when it's held in America, to provide exposure to fuel Americans' interest.
For a month, starting June 8, Turner Broadcasting will beam more than two dozen matches from Italy on its TNT cable network. Cost of televising the games is expected to be $10 million.
The network is taking a risk, but soccer buffs say the potential for success is great.
Outside the United States, soccer is generally a lower income, blue-collar, strictly male market, says Advertising Age magazine.
"In the U.S., however, the demographics are more attractive. Middle and upper income, suburban, professional/managerial families, the parents of which are exposed to the sport through their children, follow soccer as participants and fans."
The council's 1988 survey counted 15.5 million people in this country playing soccer, more than 12 million under age 18.
Soccer ranked third among team sports pursued by boys and girls under age 18 in this country, behind basketball and volleyball, ahead of softball, baseball, touch and tackle football and ice hockey. Among children under age 12, it was second only to basketball.
In Roanoke, sandlot soccer teams outnumber sandlot football squads by 70 or 80 to 25, according to Ruth Wilkinson of the recreation staff. Another 70 teams play in the Roanoke County rec leagues, said Bob Guthrie of its athletic staff. Soccer is way ahead of football there, too.
On May 10, USA Today published a survey called "How sports participation has changed."
It said the number of high school students participating in soccer has increased 104 percent since 1980 while other sports have held steady or decreased.
Football grew only six-tenths of one percent in that time, baseball grew half of one percent. Basketball participation dropped 8.8 percent, wrestling fell 11.4 percent and outdoor track was down 18.7 percent.
To soccer officials and fans, those kinds of statistics spell promise, even though the National Federation of State High School Associations in Kansas City reported that high school football players outnumbered male high school soccer players by 954,000 to 196,000 in 1985-86.
"There are an awful lot of young kids playing it around the country who eventually will be educated spectators," said Peter Ehlers, program specialist with the United States Youth Soccer Association in Memphis.
A safer sports option
Many parents believe that soccer is safer than many other team sports. While head injuries and broken legs sometimes occur, soccer injuries overall tend to be minor.
The chance of an injury resulting in time lost from soccer practice or games may be one-half to one-fifth as great as in football, according to Dr. Frank Noyes of the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, who was quoted in the Physician and Sportsmedicine magazine.
A study of athletes at the 1984 Norway Cup, the world's largest soccer tournament, revealed 411 injuries and incidents of hyperventilation in 35,154 player-hours among the 1,016 boys' and 332 girls' teams.
The vast majority of the injuries were strains, cuts and scrapes.
Girls were hurt at roughly twice the rate of boys.
In Roanoke youth league play, broken ankles and legs are rare but not unknown. Last weekend in Greensboro, the '80 Green team's goalie Andy Starr took a ball in the face and got a bloody nose and blurred vision, but with no lasting damage. On Wednesday, with a bit of pride, he displayed the dried blood on one of his goalie's gloves.
The game gets rougher as the participants grow older, said Kim Viera, the Hollins College coach.
High school play results in "a lot of knee problems, a lot of ankles." Division I collegiate play is "very intense," he said. "You play for keeps."
Grass-roots support
If soccer ever does become a mass-appeal sport in this country, it will because of the grass-roots efforts of people like Sharon McCulley and Lynn Cochran.
McCulley helped organize the girls' teams at six high schools in the region - Patrick Henry, Cave Spring, Salem, North Cross, Martinsville and Magna Vista in Henry County. They played their first season this school year. McCulley coached Patrick Henry for no pay.
Five years ago McCulley suggested that the city rec department add girls' teams to its leagues, because as the boys got older and stronger, girls were dropping off mixed teams.
Now, the city has both girls' and mixed teams.
Cochran, a deputy clerk with U.S. District Court in Roanoke, has a son and a daughter who play both Youth League and fall rec league soccer.
She also coaches, referees and plays on an adult team with her husband.
Both she and McCulley list all the usual reasons for soccer's allure - its suitability for people of all sizes and skill levels, the conditioning it provides, its relative lack of serious injuries.
Helene Katz is another grass roots contributor - she manages the '80 Greens - who will attend at least six games this weekend to watch sons Scott and Eric in the Crestar tournament.
"Of all the sports," she said, "this is my favorite, as a mom."
by CNB