Soccer to Him

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It is a fact in many professions that to a few of the charlatans some success will come. It is a sad fact that to some of these charlatans a public forum will be provided in which they can spread their half-baked ideas. I am sure that Cliff Stevenson is delighted that you have given him his forum. I would now like to finish cooking some of his ideas.

(1) Coaches, administrators, alumni and reporters all cause damage when they lose sight of the purpose of a college soccer program. A college soccer program is not set up to develop American, British or any other nationality of soccer players. That's good, too because realistically it could not do that. A soccer player's career lasts 27 years from the age of 10 until about the age of 37. The four years from 18 until 21--at Harvard roughly a total of 240 hours of training--don't determine future success. The nine years from 10-18, the environment, and the innate characteristics of the player determine his future. Two-hundred-and-forty hours over four years is nothing when compared to the 400 or so hours that kids in soccer environments spend in contact with the ball each year.

A college soccer program is not set up to develop future professionals. Similar illusions have left ugly scars on football and basketball programs at other colleges. The causes of those scars are among the factors which led to the foundation of the Ivy League.

A college soccer program is set up to provide a graded, controlled and high-quality competitive experience to eligible students of the college. This is so simple and so sensible that it's astounding how frequently it gets overlooked.

(2) The recruiting program at a college should reflect the college's principles. At Harvard the idea is to encourage the application of those students who (a) The Admissions Office would be interested in adding to the composition of the Freshman Class for its own reasons (b) would most likely make contributions to the soccer program and (c) would not have applied if they weren't encouraged to do so. It is not to (a) falsely raise the hopes of a large number of people who are not strong candidates for admission to Harvard (b) falsely give the impression that Harvard College is discouraging the application of gifted students by a massive effort to recruit athletes (c) spend a large amount of money--about 4 percent of Duke's recruiting budget is what's allowed (d) utter one single disparaging word about any other college, college soccer program or college coach and (e) offer any guarantees whatsoever concerning possible acceptance, financial aid, special treatment or selection to the varsity team.

(3) Imagine that each one of the 195 or so Division I college soccer teams fielded 11 foreign players next year. That would introduce about 2200 foreign players all across the country.

In 1987 the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association (MYSA) alone registered 50,000 young American players between the ages of eight and 18. This is but a small part of the one million young American players that registered with the United States Youth Soccer Association (USYSA) in 1987. We guess that there are another one million who have not yet registered with the USYSA. Most of these two million were happily going about learning the game of soccer completely oblivious to the college scene. They were learning the game in their leagues from the volunteer parent coaches, the volunteer club coaches, the district team coaches and the state team coaches.

About 65 percent of these kids are males. So do you really want the readers of your article to believe that even 2200 foreign college players could stop, hinder or affect the development of 1.3 million young American players?

Organizations like the MYSA are mandated and equipped to deal with the development of American soccer, not colleges and certainly not the $350 per week Cliff Stevenson Soccer Campus.

(4) Why do you suppose, then people like Cliff Stevenson and Joe Morrone have such a shrill stake in denouncing the inclusion of foreign players in the rosters of successful college soccer teams? Misplaced patriotism? Yeah, that's the ticket.

What didn't actually feel too good about your article was the impression left by Richard Miller that I "totally ignored American players." I had tremendous respect and cared for each and every one of those guys whether they played Freshman or whether they were in line for All America honors; whether they were born in Boston or whether they were born and raised in South Africa, like Richard Miller.

If some of that respect didn't come through then I was a colossal failure. But your best authority on that subject would have beren the majority of my players. Jape Shattuck

Editor's Note: Jape Shattuck was the coach of the Harvard Men's Soccer team from 1982 to 1986