I have mentioned the fact that I truly excelled at soccer of the football variety when I was young to the point where people probably think I am bragging about it. I AM proud of that accomplishment but the point isn't to rub it in anyone else's face. I worked pretty hard to become as good as I was and looking back I feel as though if I had tried a lot harder than I did and perhaps had better guides, that I possibly could have played professionally. Unfortunately, I graduated from high school during a time where there was no professional league in the United States and no one had much chance of getting recruited from the USA to play overseas in any of the "good" leagues. A few here and there made it, but I am not trying to say that I was ever anywhere near as good as the likes of Landon Donovan or Clint Dempsey.
I was pretty good, but when I got to college I no longer had my support team and instead of being a dominant player, I was just an average one. This kind of killed my spirits and I think it got into my head and this resulted in me not even getting much field time and eventually being cut from the team. It is tough to get motivated to practice and get better when the head coach of the team doesn't even remember your name just months after actively recruiting you from your high school.
I didn't end up doing much as far as being on my college team is concerned and it was difficult to feel motivated to try to excel because soccer of the football variety was not at all popular during that time in the late 90's. Our games were free to attend and this was a Division-1 college team yet the stands were almost completely empty during every game. We used to joke that the only people there were parents and girlfriends and we were likely correct about this.
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In those times soccer wasn't a sport that really anyone paid attention to at a college level or even a professional level. The United States had already tried to have a pro soccer league and it had crashed and burned in just a few years. It would be many years before the MLS came into being so we were a bit demoralized on the field. The above picture is not of our stadium and I would have liked to show you one of our stadium but we didn't have one. We honestly didn't know where we were going to be playing our games because if possible we would play on the American football field but if the football team needed it, we couldn't play their either. Sometimes we would play on a pitch that was so badly maintained that it hardly seemed like we were playing on a near professional level. These games didn't even have stands so anyone that came to watch had to bring their own chair. It was quite shit.
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When I was attending UNC and was on their soccer of the football variety team, they did not have this stadium. They do have one today but it is not dedicated to just the soccer teams. It is for soccer, lacrosse, and several other sports. I have never been to it but it is certainly a lot better than the grounds we played on while I was there. There is something demoralizing about going to play a game and the yard marks from the football field are still in the middle of your game. It is easy to determine that the school honestly doesn't give a damn about you when they wont even paint the field markings for your sport on the field. They powder-painted the goal box, but that was all. If it rained, the ref and the players simply had to make their best guess about where this line would be.
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It took a while for the States to embrace soccer to the popular sport that it is today but even as I am writing this, many of the MLS teams don't even have their own stadium. They simply play in the NFL stadium or some other stadium that is in the same city during the off-season of baseball or american football.
For us, the only team we played against that even had their own dedicated soccer grounds was the University of Virginia. It was always a joy to go and play there because they also had actual fans. These games would be something that all of us looked forward to because we had grown accustomed to playing in front of no one. Unfortunately, a big part of the reason why UVA had such a great field and complex was because they invested very heavily in that program and therefore they always ended up with much better teams than everyone else in our conference. We would enter the 3 games I played in that stadium with a defensive strategy and were aiming for a draw rather than a win. It's not a great feeling going into a game and having your head coach basically tell you that "we know we can't win this game, but let's try to not embarrass ourselves out there, ok?"
I guess you could stay that to a certain degree I was a victim of the times because this was a dark period for the United States as far as soccer of the football variety was concerned. Despite it being the most participated in youth sport, sports fans simply were not interested in attending games, even for free. This has changed a lot since then thanks in part to a couple of successful runs with the USA men's national team in the World Cup as well as the Women doing extremely well and winning the World Cup several times. The women took a hit in the last one with a lot of their own fans rooting against them but that was their own damn fault for getting too political.
The end of this story isn't that great though, because I ended up getting cut from the team before the end of the second season. I don't try to blame this on anyone other than myself because even though I was unhappy with how unpopular it was and how nobody including the university seemed to give a rip that we even existed, I still had a novel opportunity to shine at that time in my life but instead decided to be stubborn and just put in minimal effort. I look back on those days with great regret because if I had continued the level of dedication that I had in my high school days, I probably could have transferred to another, better school, and then perhaps caught the eye of some professional team in Europe.
I wasn't good enough for that to happen, but that was largely my fault. Your body changes a lot between high school and your 20's and it was during that time that I kind of let myself go and wasn't even trying to get better when it is the MOST important time to be doing just that. I think it was the absence of my father, who was instrumental in getting me to the level that I had already achieved, that in part at least, lead to my waning desire to excel at the game.
I look back on those days with some level of regret because it was the only chance I would be given to be in that sort of spotlight. You can't get those days back but I suppose I should just be happy that I made it even to that level.
Being good at the sport initially came effortlessly to me as a child, but things got a lot more competitive the older I got. I was excited to get recruited by a Division-1 college, but then discovered that there's more to a program than just the name of the Uni. UNC is nationally recognized because of their basketball and American football programs, but honestly, at least then, they didn't give a damn about their soccer program.
Only one person that I was ever on the field with ever went pro and perhaps you have heard of him. His name was Eddie Pope. That guy was on a whole different level as far as ability is concerned. I should have taken the time to learn from him.
I didn't though and there were a lot of reasons why. The ignorance of youth and the feeling of being a caged bird that was recently set free contributed to me wanting to do all the fun things that were not playing a sport. Perhaps I would have been convinced to try harder if the community I was in actually cared about the team but they simply didn't. I blame no one but myself in the end.