Wide World Of Soccer

Welcome to my new blog! This is intended for soccer fanatics like myself who follow the game deeply. However there will be a twist; it will focus on mostly black soccer players. All too often our plights are overshadowed and my goals are to shed some light on our experiences.

I have been influenced by the book, Souled Out, by Shaun Powell. After reading the book I thought to myself, how come no one ever covers soccer and specifically Major League Soccer from the perspective of the black experience? As a soccer player myself, I have been ridiculed, harassed, and made fun of by my friends to the tunes of, "black people don't play soccer", and "soccer is a game for wimps", so on and so forth but that never stopped me. I started off learning the game from my father at the age of 4 where I was the only black player on my team with the Spencerport Soccer Club. As I grew older and played on more teams all too often I was still the only black player but that never stopped my desire to play the game I grew to love.

By the age of 12 I was heavily involved with my local club team, the Greece Cobras Soccer Club, based out of Greece, NY. I had some cousins that also played in the same system and then it dawned on me, was my experience in soccer tied to my West Indian (Jamaican and Haitian) heritage?. All of my cousins and the other black kids that played with me had West Indian roots, but was soccer something that was in our culture or was I thinking about it too much? Regardless, anyone that sees me on the streets does not consider me West Indian, they see a black man, so therefore my experience has been shared with other blacks of non-West Indian heritage, hence my blog.

I graduated from Penn State University in 2005 with a BS in biology and I will be completing my dental degree from the University of Michigan in May 2009. In addition to my science background I was a sociology minor. Topics of race as it pertains to society in general have always intrigued me and with the added layer of sports involved makes it all that more interesting. I have always had a dream of covering sports for my local newspaper. Growing up, I used to read the newspaper all the time and I went straight to the sports section. I grew up watching SportsCenter religiously, waking up early in the summer and watching the same episode 3-4 times, all in a row. I often found myself memorizing numbers such as NBA scoring averages, soccer goals in a year, retired jersey numbers... I learned my multiplication tables by watching football (it was easy to keep track of multiples of 7).

I will be updating this page ever so often, highlighting outstanding performances on the domestic and foreign front, and also taking a look at famous historical players. In no way do I hope to offend anyone, this is a hobby of mine and I hope you can find some enjoyment out of reading it.