Soccer a White-Kid Sport in America?

Some fairly well known female American soccer player suggested that today, and it got front-page coverage in the sports news.

I sat and paused over it.  In 1970, around the sixth-grade, we got introduced to soccer at my rural Alabama school.

The PE teacher stood there, and handed the twenty-odd kids in my group (all boys from the 6th and 7th grade) the ball and gave a brief two minutes of explanation.   To be honest, I don't think Mr 'G' knew much of anything on the sport, other than having watched it played on TV.  The two minutes of explanation really didn't help much.

So we set the ball down....picked up two sides, and tried to play for 35 minutes.  It was a total failure.

The two goalies just stood at their ends, and the group of 18 kids kept the ball in a tight 50-foot circle, and just attempting to kick it, but it really never moved more than four feet this way or that way.

We came out the second day, and I volunteered to be a goalie.  I observed the lack of movement over the ball for an entire 40-minute period.

Then we came out a third day, and the same results.

By Friday, someone probably put the suggestion to Mr 'G' that this wasn't much of a sport, and that ended the experiment.  I think over the whole week....some of the kids didn't move more than 100 feet during the PE period, per day. 

We never played it again.

White kids, as this lady puts it.....really just never grasped the game because of the lack of introduction.  I think in fifty years.....little has changed.  I suspect you could bring this up with Mr G today, and he'd probably tell you that this was the most stupid sport to introduce to Alabama kids.  I might agree.