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Volume 126 Issue 119
kansan.com
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY & ANSAN
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COMMENTARY
Respect the human aspect of sports
MLS
A journalism professor once told me, "Everyone has a story to tell." But when you are a journalist, you don't focus on your own story. You spend your life telling other people's stories: their successes and failures, their highs and lows.
At the University, the amount of stories could produce a newspaper thick enough to reach the melodic bells of the Campanile. One story could be about a first-generation college student holding two jobs while studying full time. Another, about a mother who returns to school to provide a better life for her daughter. It could be about the hipster on Wescoe Beach who attends every show at the Granada and wants to be a music producer, or the quiet freshman in English 101 who secretly is great at poetry.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sporting Kansas City defender Matt Besler, right, congratulates goalkeeper Eric Kronberg, left, after Kronberg made a save in the first half during the Sporting KC and Columbus Crew Major League Soccer match at Sporting Park on Sundav in Kansas City, Kan.
Edited by Austin Fisher
Even if these people's stories are never published, they are always being written. You don't have to read a person's story in the paper to get to know them. In this respect, everyone is a journalist.
I started covering sports for The University Daily Kansan in the spring of 2008. Yes, I'm old. No, I'm not still in undergrad. During the last six years, I've found that in sports, people often forget the person behind a story. They see wins and losses. They see interceptions and traveling violations. They also see touchdowns and home runs. It's important to remember that these are merely statistics.
With that, I bid the Kansan adieu. Never underestimate the privilege of attending one of the greatest, most fun, tradition-filled schools in the nation. There's an enormous responsibility in being a sports fan, especially at Kansas. Don't take that lightly.
Sometimes, the negatives of sports come to the fore. Anonymous forum posts, targeted Tweets and unruly fan behavior too often diminish the experience. This isn't to say that you should never be critical, far from it. But before you stoop to personal attacks or disparaging remarks, remember the person behind the athlete. Remember the person behind the story.
Once you get beyond the statistics, you realize how great sports are. It's the stories behind the power forward who overcame homelessness to get a college education or the runner who fulfilled years of work by winning a championship for the Jayhawk nation. It's the sense of unity that comes from every fan's eyes being glued to the television, screaming for a foul. It's the college seniors who had never seen a home football conference win, tearing down the goalposts. It's Massachusetts Street in April 2008, where fans inundated the beer-stained pavements of downtown, treating every stranger like a lifelong friend. This is what sports are about. This is why people devote their lives to playing, covering and watching sports.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sporting Kansas City forward Jacob Peterson (37) celebrates with fans in the first half after he scored a goal against the Columbus Crew in an MLS soccer match on Sunday, May 4, 2014, in Kansas City, Kan.
NICK CHADBOURNE
sports@kansan.com
In the early months of 2014, while Sporting Kansas City and its fans were busy celebrating the team's MLS Cup victory, its 16-year-old youth player, Erik Palmer-Brown, was garnering attention from Europe. Attention from Europe's elite, specifically. Italian club Juventus reportedly offered more than $1 million for the rights to Palmer-Brown. Perhaps most surprisingly, he hadn't played a second of professional soccer; Palmer-Brown has spent the last five years developing at Sporting Kansas City's youth academy.
Sporting Kansas City founded its youth academy in 2007 as part of an initiative by Major League Soccer and the US Soccer Federation. In 2006, MLS created the "Home Grown Protected List" which gave its teams first-rights to sign local youth to their academies and, in the future, to professional contracts. To capitalize on the new rule, the US Soccer Federation created the Development Academy League in 2007, a league for professional teams' U-18 and U-16 youth teams to participate in. Sporting has four teams within its youth academy, U-12, U-14, U-16 and U-18 teams.
Sporting didn't sign a homegrown player to a pro contract for its first five years. Since then, the team has signed three, including Palmer-Brown when he signed in the summer of 2013. The other two, goalkeeper Jon Kempin and defender Kevin Ellis, signed in 2011 and are currently on loan to third-division Oklahoma City Energy.
For Palmer-Brown and other teens at the youth academy, soccer becomes a full-time job. Immediately after school, players report to the Swope Park Soccer Village in Kansas City, Mo., home of the youth academy, to practice, lift weights and comb through performance evaluations—everything that you'd expect from a
professional. The thirty game season is played on weekends, often requiring extensive travel across the Midwest. The most talented players will also travel across the country multiple times a year to train with the youth national team.
"It's a daily process: 'Can you get better today?' 'What can you do better today?' 'Here's an evaluation for this two month period, can you use that to improve in the next evaluation we have?'" U-12 and U-14 coach Matt Trumpp said.
Youth at all levels are treated and trained as if they'll play for the professional squad one day. The goal is for a player like Palmer-Brown, who joined the academy at 11-years-old, to progress through the academy and seamlessly transition to the senior team.
"We like to call it vertical integration," Director of Youth Soccer Betsy Maxfield said. "So if a player on the U-16 or U-18 ever gets called into the pros, they're not going to be nervous and stunned right away. They're going to know how to warm up just like [the pro team], they're going to know the same type of activities and the same type of drills they do up there."
BETSY MAXFIELD Director of Youth Soccer
"Depending on where you're from, what your demographic is or what your parents do — it doesn't matter to us. If you can play soccer, we want you here."
To help foster this culture, youth go to each Sporting home game to observe and connect with the professional team. The pros act as mentors for youth playing the same position as they do. On the field training is supplemented with off the field mentoring from Sporting's professional players.
"It's about creating a culture of knowing your hero and
The introduction of youth academies has created a new path for American soccer youth.
A NEW MODEL FOR YOUTH
getting that call up." Maxfield said. "And some of the pro players, we encourage them if they have off that weekend to come here to Swepe and watch the U-18s and the U-16 matches."
Previously, top players would play for local or regional club teams. Clubs charged players an average of $4,000 per season, according to a poll conducted by ESPN FC in 2009. This fee covers travel, coaches' salaries, tournament entry fees, league fees and more. The cost of club soccer can make it prohibitive to players without well-off families. The Sporting KC academy, and other MLS-affiliated academies, cover all costs for its youth, allowing them to accept talented players that otherwise couldn't afford participating in elite youth soccer programs.
"Depending on where you're from, what your demographic is or what your parents do—it doesn't matter to us." Maxfield said. "If you can play soccer, we want you here."
Sporting academy players
are also woven into the team's professional network. Youth share a locker room with professional players, have access to team doctors, and participate in the biannual MLS academy-only showcases for "anywhere from 10, on the low end, to 50, on the high end, of college coaches watching them play," Maxfield said.
Academy Director Jon Parry said the academy offers prospects opportunities that they couldn't access playing for a club or high school.
"I think just the environment we create, it can't be replicated in the high school or club situations," he said. "Nobody else is connected to a professional team like we are and our coaching staff has a wealth of knowledge."
technical advisors."
Because only a fraction of a percentage of youth go straight from the academy to the pros, players have an opportunity at each game to continue their post-academy career in college. Sporting's two biggest stars, Matt Besler and Graham Zusi, played in college before going pro.
"The league we play in, the development academy, every one of our games are scouted," Parry said. "And usually those scouts are college coaches or
Parry, a coach of 16 years, brings the academy something that only a few coaches in the country can offer. He's currently earning his elite formation coaching license from the French Football Federation, the country's governing soccer body. The license is one step below the country's professional coaching license.
"It's like getting your doctorate in soccer," he said.
doctorate in soccer," he said. Parry said he's implementing the ideas learned from the FFF's courses into the Sporting academy. This includes the "whole-part-whole" training regimen, which introduces tactical and technical aspects into the ordinary runaround-and-play-ball attitude of scrimmaging.
TEENAGED PROFESSIONALS
TEENAGED PROFESSIONALS Youth deciding to join the academy face a commitment that requires expectations and sacrifices off the field that normal teenagers wouldn't be forced to make. Academy players from U-14 and up aren't allowed to play any other sport. The team travels 10-15 times a year, mostly within the Midwest but also
SEE SPORTING PAGE 7
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