A great review of the recently released book Black People Don't Play Soccer? got my attention this week. It also made me think...I've been coaching at KIPP-South Fulton Academy in East Point, GA for three years now. My teams have been 99% African-American, with very little soccer experience outside of playing for the school team. It's been interesting to notice how much more attention they pay to soccer outside of school practices and games.
The first year, I'll never forget one of the kids coming up to me after practice. This guy was 6'3", great basketball player, had never played soccer before in his life. This was the day after an ESPN game with the then-Beckham less Galaxy. Becks would be making his debut for the team in a few months. This kid, who had probably seen a grand total of one soccer game in his life, wanted to know how much Beckham would help LA. For all of the talk about Beckham recently, his impact has been huge in getting people's attention.
Fast forward to this week, I asked the kids why they were playing for their school team. The majority talked about how much they loved soccer and wanted to play every chance they had. These kids haven't had the chances to play for the youth clubs with the pretty uniforms, shiny cleats, and thousand dollar seasons. Talk about an untapped talent pool...
Even as I'm writing this, one of the kids just called me. He was begging to practice in the gym today, even though practice has been canceled due to rain. Unfortunately, the gym is already being used.
Things are changing, it just takes giving kids an opportunity.
1 comment:
Back in '96, Kiki and company had us out in the rain and snow three days a week just for practice. Then we would turn around and have two weekend games because the Ohio season was so compressed. That was 5 days a week (that we knew about.) They really wanted to play!
Incidentally, more than half of those kids went on to college and a number of them actually played in college and/or still play for fun.
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