This winter is the 50th anniversary of high school soccer in Mississippi. It was actually fifty years ago in November, as we began practicing soccer several weeks after football season. I had been playing soccer in an adult league for some years, and, as it is a great, fun team sport, Ary Jane and I wanted our three boys to have the opportunity to play soccer in school.
They were in the lower school at St. Andrew's, and I had the idea of talking to my friend the Headmaster of St. Andrew's about starting soccer there. I had been thinking about the selling points of soccer for weeks before our meeting. I started off by saying I thought it would be a good idea to start a soccer program at St. Andrew's, and he replied that he agreed. So much for all my selling points. He said he thought it would be good to not only have a high school team, but also a lower school team. He then asked if I would coach both teams, and, without thinking, I said yes.
As St. Andrew's had just started the high school grades, we decided that the best time to play soccer was at the same time as basketball so there would be more boys available. So that is why soccer is played in the winter in Mississippi. Twenty-two boys showed up for the first day of practice, and not one of them had ever even seen a soccer game, much less played the sport. But they were fast learners and soccer is an easy game to learn.
We were the only high school in the state with a soccer team the first two years, and we learned that St. Mark's School in Shreveport was playing soccer and looking for games. We arranged to play them at home and played the first high school game in the state in November. Watching them warm up I could tell they knew how to play and they gave us a shellacking 7 to 1. But the next year we beat them as we had the better athletes. Those first two years we also played a home and home schedule with St. Martin's in New Orleans with the lower school team also playing St. Martin's.
After those first two years, high school soccer started spreading like wildfire in the state, and now I believe just about every school in the state plays soccer.
Albert Lyle is a Northsider and International Tennis Federation world champion. He plays at River Hills.
