Invested interest makes sports more enjoyable

Soccer isn’t a sport, it’s an activity.
That’s the kind of oh so enlightened statement I used to make about the game beloved by most of the world.
What a difference a couple of decades makes.
I couldn’t be in front of the TV on Friday night, but I made sure to have my laptop at work with me. That way, I could finish up my story about Redkey High School’s final graduating class while also watching the United States women’s soccer team play Sweden in the second of its three games in the group stage of the Women’s World Cup.
Growing up, soccer was not on my list of favorite sports.
I played the game for one summer season, on a team my sister also played on and my dad coached. That was it for me.
Football was my favorite sport, though I never played in an organized league. (My elementary/middle school didn’t have football, and there was no pee wee equivalent in my city either.)
I played baseball from the time I was 5 until high school, and basketball in fifth through eighth grades.
And those were the three sports that dominated my time at recess and in the back yard. I also liked to smack a tennis ball against the wall of our garage and to chip a golf ball around the back yard.
My high school — St. Edward in Lakewood, Ohio — had outstanding wrestling and hockey teams, so I developed an interest in those sports as a teenager. (There’s nothing like watching hockey when you can have your face pressed up against the glass and the goalie can hear every word you say, but that’s a topic for a different column.)
With all of that going on in my sports scope, soccer didn’t fit into the mix. In fact, I had developed a kind of disdain for the game.
I’m not really sure why or how that happened. It’s likely there was no good reason.
Even while working for the college newspaper at Cleveland State University and a local newspaper at the same time, I was never asked to cover soccer. There was football, boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball and even at least one track meet, but I was never sent to the pitch.
Then I became sports editor at The Commercial Review.
When you’re a one-man department, you cover all sports. That included soccer.
As I’ve said in this space more than once before, being invested in the athletes makes any sport more interesting. So soccer started to draw me in, and in my first fall in Jay County I saw some interesting games.
The Patriot boys 2001 season ended in controversy with a 2-1 loss in penalty kicks to Union City in the sectional tournament. The questions came because the game officials implemented penalty kick rules incorrectly, but the IHSAA decided to stick with their decision.
It’s because of that game that I now know high school soccer overtime rules inside and out.
Just a few days later, JCHS played the girls soccer sectional semifinal in what amounted to a mud pit at Richmond’s Freeman Park. The Patriots fell behind 1-0, but rallied with a pair of goals from Sarah Miller and one by Lindsay Friddle for a 3-2 win and a third consecutive berth in the sectional title game.
“We were a bit timid at first,” coach Sue Rager said after the game. “Then we decided it was OK to get a little dirty ... and by the end they were smearing mud on each other.”
Memorable soccer moments have continued through the years, from the Jay County boys’ undefeated run to the semi-state in 2008 to the girls’ back-to-back sectional titles the last two years.
Those, and many others in between, have helped my appreciation for the game grow.
Soccer is still not my favorite. That spot still belongs to NFL football, as it has for most of my life.
But tonight, I’ll be watching both game six of the NBA Finals and the U.S. women’s soccer team’s game against Nigeria.
Twenty years ago, I never would have imagined myself making that statement. I guess it just took me a while to come to appreciate the world’s most popular sport.
Better late that never, right?