Tag: "Youth soccer"

Playing against boys | Professional league in waiting, competitive instincts still burn for U.S. women

Atlanta, Aug 24 | Nel Hayes, who competed during the Women’s United Soccer Association’s three seasons as Nel Fettig, can be said to have grown up in the “early phase” of the American women’s soccer boom.

Now with a four-month-old daughter, Lily, of her own, Hayes speaks in our Aug 21 podcast of the prescient tactical awareness of girls in the Atlanta Youth Soccer Association, of which she is executive director.

Aug 24, 2007 | 0 comments View Post

Carson’s next guest | Beckham’s posh brand of football has vanguard to follow

We have offered our two cents—at current exchange rates, slightly less than one pence—on David Beckham’s touchdown (bad metaphor?) in the United States. The article appears in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Sunday “@issue” section.

Jul 16, 2007 | 1 comment View Post

Streets paved with soccer | Atlanta-birthed grassroots program teaches game and life in ‘Soccer 101’

We are grateful for the biweekly indulgence, from the north Atlanta studios of WGSR, of speaking to soccer-impassioned people about soccer. Today we feature Soccer in the Streets, part of the streetfootballworld network of some 80 football-based social-development initiatives aimed at communal and personal transformation.

Jul 10, 2007 | 2 comments View Post

Back to Brownsville | Chronicling a soccer team, and a sister city, skilled at border crossing

In our inaugural podcast, Texas writer Oscar Casares discusses his Nov 06 profile of the 2006 Texas state soccer champion Porter High School of Brownsville.

We wonder why the Dallas Cowboys, and not soccer, feature in his short stories and hear how a border culture, up to 98 percent Latino in places, may have helped foster Porter players’ resolve in facing up to racist taunts.

May 10, 2007 | 1 comment View Post

The year of Speedy Gonzales | In 2006 Texas final, Brownsville’s Cowboys produced outsider’s art

The Porter High School Cowboys’ soccer season ended prematurely this year, in a regional quarterfinal playoff to Brownsville rivals Rivera.

By defeating Coppell in the 2006 final, the school, however, will always lay claim to having become the first team from the Rio Grande Valley, in any sport, to have won a state championship competing among Texas’ largest high schools (class 5A). They also validated, in the face of prejudice, their existence as straddlers of culture and language.

Apr 13, 2007 | 4 comments View Post

Villains, for a moment | New York Times’ Fugee tale exposes soccer-challenged Southerners to public ire

Clarkston, Georgia | In the first few lines of a 6,000-word article by Warren St. John, readers of the Jan 21 New York Times—even those glancing casually at copies at supermarket checkouts—learned Clarkston Mayor Lee Swaney’s feelings about soccer and, by extension, about the nicely kitted team of refugees who wanted to play in his town.

But they may have been misled by a convenient stereotype and should have been treated to a tale without villains.

Jan 25, 2007 | 14 comments View Post

Nine years after volcanic eruption, football still suffers | Readings for 2 December 2006

Articles on football in Montserrat, an Arsenal stadium mystery, a winner in the Football Art Prize competition, possible relief for German referee Robert Hoyzer, the “wee ones” in Scotland, and a plan for cleaner World Cups.

Dec 01, 2006 | 0 comments View Post

Don’t call them WAGs | Readings for 16 November 2006

Articles include a history of women’s football in England, the quest for “conkers” superiority, advances in the Australian game, and an actor, alone on stage, convincing audiences that he is attending football matches.

Nov 15, 2006 | 0 comments View Post

Is soccer evil? | Quest for playing space threatens bucolic haven

Saratoga, California | In a drama played out daily at planning and zoning hearings throughout the United States, parents’ desires for soccer space in this bedroom community of redwood trees and sycamores have created tension with other residents’ wishes for peace and quiet. The San Jose Mercury News reports on the dispute over the future of [...]

May 30, 2006 | 1 comment View Post

Lens on life | Mathare Valley football offers entrée to squatters’ struggle

Nairobi | Photographer John Barrett Reed traveled in 2005 to the Mathare Valley slums on the eastern edge of Kenya’s capital, hoping to provide new images of Africa for Western audiences who may have become desensitized. He concentrates his lens and writing on a slice of Mathare, home to 600,000 squatters, and uncovers the organic quality of football as [...]

Mar 04, 2006 | 0 comments View Post

Time to chill | Soccer with moosemeat on the side

Soldotna, Alaska | Tired of getting clobbered by teams from southern Canada, the Northwest Territories and Yukon in the late 1960s decided they needed a circumpolar alternative to the Canada Winter Games. The Arctic Winter Games began in 1970 and incorporate games of the Inuit, such as head pull, airplane and high kick, and Dena (snow snake and other games), along with Olympic winter sports and basketball, volleyball, table tennis and indoor soccer.

Feb 20, 2006 | 1 comment View Post

Middle-class USA | Scarsdale lawyers guard touchline from ‘outsiders’

Scarsdale, New York | A Westchester County supplement of the New York Times reports on a growing reality as playing space for soccer becomes scarce: communities having to police their fields to restrict access to “outsiders.” The case discussed by Marek Fuchs in his column (“ ’Go Out and Play’ Has Gotten Complicated,” Nov 20) involves the [...]

Nov 21, 2005 | 0 comments View Post