I was born in Duluth MN in the early 1970’s, this was hockey country. Soccer was something that wasn’t even thought of as a sport where I grew up. I remember when I first started playing at about the age of 10. My dad brought me out to the field where the kids had a game, I knew a lot of them. After the game my dad talked to the coach and the next day I was at practice. Now, we need to understand that when I say coach, I am using that term lightly. The coach was typically someone’s dad who decided to lead this group of kids on this field. The practices at that time consisted of us doing a couple laps and some stretches and then playing 11 versus 11 on a half dirt field. The one thing that stuck out at that time was if you were athletic and fast, you were considered good. In the rare instance where you had a player that had some skill, that player was considered great. We had one of those players on our team and because of that we rarely if ever lost.
I didn’t learn how to play soccer because we had great coaching or great facilities to train at. I learned how to play because when I wasn’t at school or home, I was playing soccer with my friends. We would get on our bikes after school and head over to the soccer field and play. We would try to duplicate what we saw the professional players doing at that time. And we would go at each other as hard as we could because that’s how we thought we were going to get better. The league that we played in was a city league with about 4 teams from all over town and our own goal was to win the city title. If I remember correctly we didn’t lose very much during those first years.
Soccer started to grow a little in Duluth and we actually had a real coach, not someone’s dad, by the time I was 13 or 14. I remember having actual practices where we would work on our skills and our positioning on the field. I played in the midfield most of the time because of my speed and athleticism and I had a little bit of skill. All we ever talked about was playing overseas or for the US National Team, not knowing how absurd that was at the time. I think the thought of playing at that level is what motivated us to keep playing. The reality was that none of us were ever going to play at a high level because we did not have the training and resources to accomplish that, not like we have today.
I often wonder what may have happened to some of our players if they had the same training that was available today. Could one of those kids have ended up playing professionally somewhere or even for the US National Team? Obviously there are a lot of things to consider when asking that question, but I do believe there would have been a better chance of that happening with today’s advances. Playing soccer as a kid was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.