It is that time of year again. The weather is warming up. The plants are turning green. Youth soccer is cranking up. For the next several weekends, families across the country will spend Saturdays watching their kids play soccer. We are one of them, as my stepdaughter is a soccer player extraordinaire.
The other day, I was watching the first match of the season and started looking around. Within sight of the field, there were several things dripping in Americana.
In the distance, I saw traffic going down the interstate. Trucks and cars passed by on their way to unknown places on the map.
A little closer, vintage airplanes took off from the local airport as amateur pilots took to the wild blue yonder.
On the other side of the runway, there sat a National Guard armory with an American flag flying high. Military vehicles were parked in the back.
Further on the horizon, I saw a couple of church steeples. One stood over a Baptist church, and the other stood over a Church of Christ church. Both denominations are big in this area.
As I scanned the landscape, I realized that I was looking at America. However, I was looking at America while watching a soccer game. Does that make soccer a part of this nation’s fabric? We like to talk about baseball, basketball and football as America’s games. However, there were dozens of families watching hundreds of kids playing a sport that many people consider foreign.
I admit that it felt weird. However, I think I am right in saying the following. For all of those people, including me, soccer is an American game. I say that even though I know nothing about its rules or its strategies. All I know is that you are supposed to put the ball in the goal.
SBI: A Thinning Crowd 
Both of my children played soccer, so, yes, it is an American game! Neat post.
Thank you. It is fun to watch the kids play, but I would hate to get out there myself.
It’s the game the rest of the world calls football! Actually the USA has a pretty decent team and should do well at the World Cup this summer. The great thing about the game is that anyone can play it. Girls as well as boys, big, small, slow, fast. As long as you’ve got a ball you are good to go.
It’s a fun game to watch. I just have a hard time following it. Around here, it is big as a youth sport, but most of them abandon it when they get older.
For a nation that was build by ‘foreigners’, which has kept its arms open to them, why should the foreignness of the game be weird? You guys have a decent team (but not a playing style I care for – terribly defensive).
Very true. As I explain to my classes, everyone here had ancestors who came from somewhere else. It is weird because people of my generation and older did not grow up with it. Hopefully, the younger generations will embrace it.
Many of us don’t understand the nuances of the game, but we don’t understand hockey, either.
Wait till you see cricket 🙂