Soccerhead
An Accidental Journey into the Heart of the American Game
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Soccerhead is youth soccer coach Jim Haner's investigation into the origins of soccermainia
On July 10, 1999, 100,000 Americans, mostly women, did something they had not done before, at least not in such numbers. They showed up to watch a soccer match.
Their attendance at the 1999 Women's World Cup Final took the world by surprise, forcing it to recognize much about itself that it had been in denial of for quite some time. Who were these soccer fans? Where had they come from? Why had no one noticed them before?
Award winning journalist Jim Haner asks these questions, and others, as he sets off in search of the origins of the American passion for soccer, uncovering the game's roots in an early industrial Northeast and following them up through the transcontinental suburban present. But Haner is by no means a passive historian of the game; he is the coach of the Hornets, a rag-tag team of ten nine-year-old boys and one determined little girl. Haner provides us with an intimate view of his team's struggles and successes over the course of season, and of his own transformation from reluctant soccer dad to authentic 'soccerhead'.
Seamlessly weaving personal and historical narrative threads, Soccerhead is both an enticing memoir and a cultural inquiry of the first-order--enlightening, entertaining, and informative--shedding new light on a little known chapter of American history.
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The year his son turned six, Haner was shanghaied by a group of local parents into coaching the College Park Hornets, a scrappy group of boys (and one girl) finding their legs on the pee-wee soccer fields outside Washington, D.C. His book charts his ensuing obsession with the sport in language as brisk as the game. Between weekly matches, Haner, a Baltimore Sun writer, pores over books, visits fabled soccer homelands and interviews legends to uncover the American heart of this foreign game. Although Native Americans played a version of soccer with a deerskin ball, the sport really took root in the U.S. in the 1930s, when immigrant workers played in raucous leagues. Walter Bahr, who took the winning shot against the English in a 1950 World Cup game, tells Haner how his team of blue-collar laborers stunned some of the world's best players. But Haner learns the essence of the sport from his kids. Watching them play, he sees how fluidity, creativity and trust reign in this simple game. After the Hornets lose a county championship, Haner concludes, "There is a God... and he gave us soccer at the dawn of time so that we would never forget who is in charge."
