ESPN Article: Is college soccer too much of a risk for rising U.S. talent?

I went to a North East DIII School in the early 80's. Soccer was not only less popular the but technical level was a lot lower as well. Of course the caste system was no where near as rigid as it is right now (same goes for the club system which has stratified as well) The difference between D1 and D3 was negligible in a lot of cases. In fact we played against teams like Army, Colgate, SUNY Albany and Binghampton which I think are all D1's now. Decent athleticism but in most cases hundreds of hours of deliberate practice instead of thousands.

But to get back on topic, it was a bad pipeline for training pros back then for non-existent pro opportunities and it's a worse system now for significantly more pro opportunities. They should honestly just take away all the scholarship money and make it a low pressure show the schools colors walk on tryout thing. Eventually in 30 or 40 years that's what we will have if there is enough soccer infrastructure to 4 or 5 tiers/regional leagues of professional soccer in this country. The sooner the better. Of course our single entity BS will probably just keep us muddling along for decades but that's a different thread.

 

I'll give you the late acceptance at the high school level, but my age 50+ cousins played soccer in Iowa growing up. Games and practices were on the large athletic fields at area middle and high schools with permanent soccer goals. Roughly 30 years or so ago, several youth programs constructed purpose-built facilities with multiple fields and started fielding travel teams. High school soccer became sanctioned in Iowa (as a spring sport, which it remains) roughly 2o years ago. That said, there are still a large number of schools that either partner for boys and girls soccer, or do not have the option at all. Track still rules because narrow-minded football and wrestling coaches run those programs. It's not about the spring sport, it's about controlling their athletes in the off-season. Despite the research that says track is probably the worst activity for off-season football training, it's a bitch to get those coaches to allow kids to play soccer or lacrosse (in the four districts it's available) because they don't run the programs. Unsurprisingly, the kids that buck their coaches' desires tend to perform better come fall...
If I remember correctly, Nebraska and the Dakotas were on roughly the same time table.