Comment by nativeit

I graduated high school in 2001. During the summer before my freshman year, I signed up for the soccer team. We trained 6-hours/day, 6-days/week during the summer. I thought it was grueling, but I also understood that was part of what made our team one of the top contenders in the state. Even still, we were very much in the shadow of the middling football team.

But I put up with it. Summer in the rural south in the 1990s could be a deeply boring affair, without something to occupy us. I was easily in the best shape of my life at the end of the summer (I could run 11-miles in about an hour without stopping). But then, after school started, I met someone else who enjoyed the same obscure punk music I did, and who owned a drum set, and quickly decided I wanted to play music much more than spend all day every day on the soccer field. So before the first game, I quit the team. I think they went on to do pretty well. My band was terrible, but we had fun.

I guess my point is that—in 1997, at a rural school in the south that very much cared mostly about the football team, playing soccer in high school was still a full-time commitment.