OUR TURNER SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM
We boys had a soccer team in the winter of 1963, at James Milton Turner Elementary School, even if we did not have any coaches, any equipment, nor even a complete understanding of the rules . But , we had spirit ! We had speed. And we had fun!
We played in cold, at times, blustery-winter weather in our homemade, green-dyed, t-shirts against other grade schools' soccer teams upon Nipher Junior High School 's usually frozen field .
The other teams had coaches , equipment, and an understanding of the rules. They were white. We were black. And that explained all of the differences in the Kirkwood, Missouri School District in 1963.
We would walk from Meacham Park into Kirkwood, proper; play a game that we would usually win; then we would cool-walk back home to Meacham Park, savoring victory in our own raucously loquacious way.
In the championship soccer game , we learned about the off-sides rule the hard way ! Our speed was our main asset , dribbling being foreign to us , as, indeed, was soccer itself foreign to black boys like us, in the winter, 1963. Baseball, basketball, football and track were the team sports that our culture best knew.
Soccer to us was akin to kickball that we played on our playground.
Our team modus operandi on our Turner soccer team was to kick the ball forward, race speedily ahead, while outrunning the opposition downfield, to kick it into the net for a goal. It worked brilliantly for us soccer neophytes until the championship match at Nipher.
There, as already stated, the officials cited us for being off-sides, often! This caused us to lose the match , and lose our triumphal swagger walking home .
Many people may not recall our boy's soccer team at Turner School in 1963. But we do. We always will remember!
Thursday, June 14, 2018
OUR SOCCER TEAM
OUR TURNER SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM
We boys had a soccer team in the winter of 1963, at James Milton Turner Elementary School, even if we did not have any coaches, any equipment, nor even a complete understanding of the rules . But , we had spirit ! We had speed. And we had fun!
We played in cold, at times, blustery-winter weather in our homemade, green-dyed, t-shirts against other grade schools' soccer teams upon Nipher Junior High School 's usually frozen field .
The other teams had coaches , equipment, and an understanding of the rules. They were white. We were black. And that explained all of the differences in the Kirkwood, Missouri School District in 1963.
We would walk from Meacham Park into Kirkwood, proper; play a game that we would usually win; then we would cool-walk back home to Meacham Park, savoring victory in our own raucously loquacious way.
In the championship soccer game , we learned about the off-sides rule the hard way ! Our speed was our main asset , dribbling being foreign to us , as, indeed, was soccer itself foreign to black boys like us, in the winter, 1963. Baseball, basketball, football and track were the team sports that our culture best knew.
Soccer to us was akin to kickball that we played on our playground.
Our team modus operandi on our Turner soccer team was to kick the ball forward, race speedily ahead, while outrunning the opposition downfield, to kick it into the net for a goal. It worked brilliantly for us soccer neophytes until the championship match at Nipher.
There, as already stated, the officials cited us for being off-sides, often! This caused us to lose the match , and lose our triumphal swagger walking home .
Many people may not recall our boy's soccer team at Turner School in 1963. But we do. We always will remember!
