I live in the middle of nowhere. Actually, get to the middle of nowhere and drive a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I love it this way; I love being out in the country with all the freedoms that come with it. I love seeing many times the number of stars I used to be able to see in a subdivision not too far outside of Raleigh. The pace of life is great and the people are wonderful.

But one downside is that watching live soccer is incredibly difficult. The nearest club team to me is nearly two hours a way, the nearest college team is about forty minutes.

What’s actually worse is that soccer is not a well-defined aspect of the culture out here. Youth soccer programs are fairly scarce, and there’s only a couple of decent high school teams about. Like many areas in the Carolinas, baseball, basketball, and American football take precedent. Last fall, I went into the house of a friend and, to my elation, saw a Premier League match on only to be informed that the folks in the house had just inadvertently left the TV on that channel from the morning.

Out here, soccer is largely viewed as a foreign game, and when it comes to youth, parents are just as new to the game as their youngest children. I remember hosting a youth soccer camp in the summer of 2017 and seeing ten year olds trying to pick up the ball and run with it. It is similar to what happened when the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL first moved to Raleigh. I remember sitting in the then-named “Entertainment and Sports Arena,” and every time a whistle blew there was an explanation up on the screen of what rule had just been violated. The fans had no idea because they had never really experienced hockey.

Where I live in Northeastern NC also happens to be one of the poorer areas of North Carolina. Resources for youth sports are particularly scarce.

If you’re reading this article, odds are you love the sport of soccer like I do. You want to see it grow here in the Carolinas, you want to see youth growing up in the game and hope that one day someone from our youth programs scores a crucial goal for the men’s or women’s national teams on the world stage.

So how do we address these issues so that our young people can learn how great this sport is?

For some areas in the Carolinas, NCAA DII soccer is as good as it gets.

The first thing we can do is turn weaknesses into strengths. For instance, a local high school in my area just added a soccer program last year in large part because it is far less expensive to operate a soccer program than an American football one. In rural areas where finances can be a struggle, the fact that you can play soccer in an open field with a ball and no extra pads is a blessing. Every player doesn’t need a bat, batting helmet, and glove; we can get things going quickly and efficiently.

Second, we can take advantage of the fact that soccer is an extremely easy sport to pick up. Do not get me wrong, it’s an incredibly difficult sport to master, but getting a five year old just being introduced to sports to kick a ball is easier than her to throw a ball into an elevated hoop at that same age or participate in any kind of fielding when a ball is hit off a tee.

Third, and most important, those of us who already love the sport have to be the change we want to see.

What I mean by this is that getting soccer to grow in rural areas is most likely going to require us to be the ones who organize the leagues, who coach up the kids, maybe even make us the ones who have the bag full of soccer balls and the pop up goal. We should be the ones introducing soccer to our local institutions: that church that wants a youth outreach program, that part time county parks and rec that wants something new in the community, that homeschool group that needs an activity.

Our work can get kids here one day. (Photo Credit: Zach Hicks)

Absolutely everything about soccer in America is hard. The present culture surrounding the sport is really only a couple decades old, and there are very, very popular sports that we need to compete with. Our men’s national team will be missing the next World Cup, our women’s national team doesn’t get enough credit or attention for how good they are, and thanks to the feuding between MLS and the NASL, there’s a fair bit of contention associated with the professional game here too.

It’s even harder in rural areas where there are fewer people and equally entrenched cultural sports traditions. But the sport is growing in America and every day there are more and more people falling in love with it. We can see the game we love grow in the areas we love, but if you’re in a rural area like I am that may mean you being the one who leads the way. Good luck to you!