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Race.
It’s a word that makes some people cringe and turn their heads as if they were blind and deaf.
I’ll never forget covering the demise of the South-Inter Conference Association (SICA) the last two years and realizing how ignorant some people were to race in today’s society. Still to this day, there are people in the south suburbs that point a finger and blame me for covering this major news story. I politely remind them if the SICA federal lawsuit wasn’t settle out of court, it would have become the largest federal lawsuit involving school districts since Brown vs. the Board of Education.
But here’s a question that needs to be addressed – why aren’t more black athletes playing soccer in Illinois?
How many black athletes did you see in attendance at this year's state finals - boys or girls? How many black coaches did you see on the benches? How many black officials did you see on the sidelines?
I can tell you there wasn’t even a single black adult on the IHSA bench personnel in the North Central College press box.
Want me to keep going? I will.
I have seen more black athletes in girls soccer than boys soccer since I began covering the sport in 1995.
Yes, there are some black athletes playing soccer in the city and a handful of black athletes playing soccer in the suburbs. Look at soccer throughout the world and even in the MLS – there are thousands of black players.
When you search the demographics on the U.S. Youth Soccer and Illinois Youth Soccer (IYSA) web sites, it’s not surprising neither offers the demographic stat of white and black athletes playing the sport. There are 5.3 million kids throughout the country playing youth soccer, but how many are black?
I just went through the Pepsi Showdown program from this year and can count on one hand the number of black players from the 38 team photos.
IYSA does have a number of inner-city programs to help expose soccer to children at an early age. Soccer is no more expensive than basketball. It's one ball and two goals - just like basketball.
What is the IHSA doing to help address this issue? Why isn’t it helping promote the sport to black athletes? The IHSA has nine adminstrators and only one is black.
The eye-popping stats are as black and white as they seem. And if you don’t believe this is a problem, please stay in your clueless bubble.
- Joe Trost
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Two reasons as I see it - cost and culture . Soccer is an expensive sport to play away from high school and many of the club teams are made up of children of immigrants who are either Hispanic or Caucasian .
This is a tough one .
It's not the IHSA, it's the national promotion of Basketball and football. Look at baseball, the are having the problem. There are less black players in the Majors. As for soccer, there's no money in it compared to Basketball and Football. There's no Pele to be a role model compared to a Mia in the Women's side.
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