Origin Of Soccer In The US

2 Pages 402 Words

When Did Soccer Originate in the United States?


Until the origin of Rugby early in the 19th century and of American football some 30 years later, all football games were forms of soccer. Although Great Britain may well buy claim to being the birthplace to this sport, historians have noted that games closely resembling it were played in many other countries. One form was familiar in ancient Greece and Rome. Another type of soccer was played at about the same time in China, where it was called Tsu Ch’iu.
When soccer first started in the United States, it was played primarily by school boys and college teams, and was largely an upper-class game. Historians agree that a form of soccer was played in Virginia as early as 1609. By 1800, the sport was organized and played on many college campuses in the east. Colleges such as Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Brown had soccer teams. The first written account of football in the U.S. centered on contests in the major colleges and universities of the Northeast. The freshman and sophomore classes at Harvard had instituted an annual intramural football contest in 1827, played on the first Monday of the new school year. In 1873, inspired by the English Football Association's rule unification, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Rutgers met in New York to draw up a uniform set of rules. The first intercollegiate game using rules resembling modern game was played on November 7, 1869 in New Brunswick, NJ between Princeton and Rutgers (Rutgers won 6-4).
The Oneida soccer Club, formed in Boston in 1862 is often cited as the first soccer club to consist of a regular roster of players as opposed to the pick-up games commonly played at the time. It consisted of a group of Boston secondary school students from fairly elite public schools in the area (Boston Latin, Boston English, etc.) This club would play matches against pick-up teams throughout the Boston collegiate community and ...