Times have changed since the day when Suwannee Parks and Recreation Director Greg Scott remembers a parent refusing to let his son sign up for soccer.
“You don’t play that, you play football or baseball,” Scott remembers the parent saying when the child expressed interest in the sport.
Now, for the parks and recreation department, which is shared by Live Oak and Suwannee County, soccer has one of the highest enrollment numbers of any sports program it offers. The baseball program was the most popular this past season, at 449 participants. Soccer came in second at 359 participants. The recreation football program drew 202 participants.
The programs are spilt into different categories. For instance, the baseball program has baseball: 220 participants; softball: 110; and T-ball: 119. The soccer program has different age groups and the football program has tackle football: 138; and flag football: 64.
As one sport rises, another may fall. Football program enrollment has dropped between 10 to 20 percent in the last 10 years, Scott estimated. Tennis has also dropped off quite a bit, he added.
“We didn’t have soccer when I grew up,” Scott said. “Football was the big king.”
It was around 1990 when the father who refused to let his son sign up for soccer. It’s hard to pinpoint a “magic moment” when the sport began to notably rise in popularity, Scott said, but he did have theories as to why it grew.
The increase in popularity isn’t entirely from children, either, Scott said. Many parents in recent decades got involved with it in college and brought their interest in it to towns like Live Oak.
Families moving upward from South Florida, where the sport has been part of the culture for much longer, did the same, Scott added.
People have a much more diverse access to information now, so they might have more exposure to sports that aren’t really part of their local tradition, Scott said. This could explain why the growth in popularity of some sports came largely in the last decade or so.
Unlike football or baseball, which feature regular breaks in the action as the players regroup or wait, soccer is in constant motion, Scott said.
“It keeps the kids more engaged in what’s going on,” he said. “The kids are always moving, so there’s no time for the mind to wander.”
Studies show that soccer and basketball are the most physically active sports, he said.
“It’s just an exciting sport,” Scott said. “It never stops.”
Compared to games like football, which usually gravitate toward either particularly fast or large players, soccer is fairly inclusive, Scott added.
“Everybody can participate, no matter what size you are,” he said.
