As a correspondent sports writer for The Casey County News, I write an weekly editorial column for the publication. Published July 11, 2012.
I am finding myself more and more ashamed of my ignorance of
one of the world’s most popular sports: soccer, aka ‘football’. In addition to
growing up in a nation where the sport was always shadowed by basketball,
football and baseball, soccer was never available in our county athletics.
As an adult, I am realizing what I have been missing, and
apparently much of this country is as well. A study conducted by ESPN/Luker polls in 2011 shows soccer to be the second most popular sport in the 12-24 age
group, right behind football, with basketball at number three.
Without purposefully planning it, I found myself in Brazil
during the kickoff of the 2010 World Cup when visiting a former Casey County
High School exchange student, Gui Buso. Of course, now, I realize I should have planned the trip for 2014 (or need to
plan another trip??) when the event will be hosted by Brazil.
Simply being in the country that prides themselves on the
sport beyond all else was incredible. Their
McDonald’s menu was even redone with a specialty “World Cup Menu”—a sandwich
for every nation. No, the U.S. was not represented… You could not go anywhere
without seeing people in soccer jersey. A trip to the soccer museum in Sao
Paulo was included on our itinerary.
I also had the pleasure of attending one of the last games
played in the famous “Maracana” stadium in Rio de Janeiro before it went under
construction for the 2014 World Cup. (We
were told at the time it was the last game to be played but I cannot find
confirmation of that.) See full blog post report on the event here.
Home stadium of the Flamenco, the Maracana was once the
world’s largest soccer stadium seating 200,000 people. Several renovations have brought that number
down over the years and its current construction results in just over 75,000
seats, but with much more comfort.
Despite the rainy evening and the, then, close to 85,000-seat
stadium being far from full, the atmosphere did not lack enthusiasm. Drums,
chants, cheers… I did not know a word but still found myself attempting to sing
along.
Some argue soccer to be a ‘boring’ sport. I am quickly
learning this is simply a lack of understanding the sport. My husband, an avid
soccer player through his youth, can easily get sucked into a game.
He always points out that his biggest beef with basketball
is the drawn-out endings with time-out after time-out, where 59-seconds turns
into 30-minutes. With soccer, the clock
never stops and neither do the athletes. It’s 90-minutes of sweat and action. I
just have yet to learn all of the words and terminology to quite keep up.
The recent report from ESPN/Luker reflecting the youth’s
rising interest in this sport excites me and seeing that Casey County is
following that trend definitely excites me.
Soccer had its first season in the middle school this past
spring with team members spanning from eighth graders down to the elementary
level. I had the pleasure of watching their first game of the season and
despite coming up short of a win, it was incredible to see the vast improvement
of these young athletes from the first to second half of the game. I can only
imagine how far they had come by the close of their season.
Like any sport, soccer skills take time to develop; the good
news is, it is an easy sport to dive into. I remember while in Brazil, Gui told
me that soccer is to them what basketball is to us: as a toddler you begin
learning to dribble a ball... but in Brazil it is dribbling with your feet
instead of your hands.
If you never have in the past, learn something about soccer
and give it a chance for your attention. I think you will find yourself loving
it more than you might expect.
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