Listening to ESPN radio late Sunday night, the football injury reporter mentioned that Seneca Wallace claims to have gotten a lot of his moves from his youth soccer days. This seems to be, becoming a common theme for good football backs and wide receivers. I think it was Tavian Banks at Iowa who said a similar thing several years ago. Anyone have any further details on Wallace's soccer past, or other football players who attribute quickness/speed to youth soccer?
yea, tends to be a theme... athletes start at soccer and then move on to other sports...the key is keeping some of those athletes from moving on to other sports and keeping them in soccer. the only one who i can really remember picking soccer over another sport was carlos bocanegra from the fire, he had scholarship offers from a few pac-10 schools as a highly ranked wide receiver coming out of high school.
Jay Heaps left halfway through his senior year at Duke during that year that they were making a run at the championship to enter the MLS draft. Lucky for him they ended up losing to UConn. Well I'm sure he was upset they lost, but that would have looked really stupid to everyone else in the country had he passed on his chance for a national championship to play in the MLS. So there's another example of an athlete who passed on another sport for soccer.
Isn't there a guy for Notre Dame who was an youth national team player, or at least farily decent at soccer? And I remember an ex-footballer playing for Texas a couple of years back. And Jarret Payton for Miami (Walter's son) was a soccer player). Basketball and soccer have more overlap though. Currently in the NBA, Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd all played soccer at one level or another. And I believe Jamar Beasley received few basketball scholarship offers, although I hear he's not doing much of anything right now.
Nomar Garciaparra has said more than once that he feels his footwork at shortstop is much better because he played a lot of soccer in his youth.
Nash's brother was a regular for Canada's national team (midfield, I think) throughout the 2nd half of the 90s.
shane walton...their starting corner back. lead the irish mens soccer team in scoring his freshman year...has since quit playing soccer at notre dame and concentrated on football. i am pretty sure jason kidd was an all-state soccer player coming out of high school...of course he was all-everything in basketball hence the choice for him.
I also heard somewhere on here a long time ago that Taylor Twellman was choosing between soccer and baseball.
Thanks for the information on other players who have continued in soccer or chosen a different sport. I will check on those names. I had forgotten about Nomar, but basically that's the kind of situation I am interested in looking into: a player in another sport who acknowledges a debt to his/her soccer youth...