Positions | Participants

Most adult rec players take to the field for two to four hours of soccer a week. Children, parents, and partners make time for this carefully cordoned off moment of play. All these other people – from people who have chosen other sports to people who watch soccer for a living – make soccer possible and help people connect with the game. The game is much bigger than the players and the participants make it all possible.

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  • Name: Jonathan Check
    Current Age: 20
    First Played: Age 8
    Years Playing: 12

    “For the first time in my life, I was watching live soccer consistently, not from in front of a TV and a camera angle situated perfectly, but from stands and at a flatter angle. After a couple years though, I grew weary of the narrow angle and began to get tickets farther up in the stands, giving me a better view. I feel vindicated when I hear other fans, broadcasters, reporters, etc say they prefer that omniscient vantage point as well.”

    Like most other kids in San Antonio, Jonathan Check grew up with soccer. Observing, however, is what has given Jonathan the most joy and another entry into the worlds of soccer. The broad strategy, the negative space, the inter-personal drama, the scale, the canvas provided to players by the pitch: all this has become fodder for a journalist in the making.

    Jonathan Check’s career in soccer journalism speaks to the ways futbol soccer is becoming embedded in institutions across Texas. His devotion and his observation skills have a place in newsrooms, and through newspapers, households across central Texas.

    Locations Played:

    • Toyota Field | San Antonio, Texas
    • STAR Soccer Complex| San Antonio, Texas
    • Texas State University | San Marcos, Texas

    Additional Information

    • Jonathan Check, “A Birds-Eye View,” Center for the Study of the Southwest, Texas State University (pdf file)

  • Name: Rickey Johnson
    Current Age: 30s
    First Played: Age 3

    “I appreciate soccer, or fußball as it is called in Germany, but I would consider myself a fan from afar. A fan from a distance. Watching, observing, but removed from the traditional emotional investment given to the sport, and detached from the religious fervor held by most of the world.”

    Rickey Johnson grew up with soccer in his family. And, since his move to the South in the United States soccer became part of his family’s German identity and their connection to their family in Germany. Fußball became what you watched at home, in German, with your family.

    Rickey Johnson helps run the rugby scene in Texas, coaching local rugby clubs in Austin. Rugby connects him to his teammates and, through them, the world.

    Locations Played:

    • Ochsenfurt, Germany
    • Houston, Texas
    • Austin, Texas

    Additional Information

  • Name: Emily Tejada
    Current Age: 20
    First Played: Age 5
    Years Playing: 12

    “Being in the fourth grade playing with sixth and seventh graders was very intimating. Of course, my comfort was being a goalie.”

    Few people consider the way soccer interacts with other sports and hobbies. For Emily Tejada, soccer became a place to have a role in the team, from being a goalie to becoming a defender. She also moved from the Wilson County Youth League to the Boys and Girls Club teams, with an accompanying shift in skill level. However, there was more than soccer in Floresville, and dance became increasingly rewarding to Emily in high school. She decided to opt in for dance, but she still enjoys meeting her friends and family whenever the Floresville jaguars play. As Emily Tejada points out, soccer has become part of the warp of programs for children in Floresville and across other small towns in Texas.

    Locations Played:

    • Wilson County Youth Soccer League | Floresville, Texas
    • Boys and Girls Club | Floresville, Texas
    • Floresville High School | Floresville, Texas
    • Floresville Middle School | Floresville, Texas
    • Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas

    Additional Information

  • Name: Nicole Williamson
    Current Age: 20s
    First Played: Age 8
    Years Playing: n/a

    “Before classes the older kids could be found having pickup games, during recess entire classes would play against rivaling classes. After school, students would practice for the next day … the sport was a culture and a lifestyle for most of my classmates. At recess, everyone played no matter how good they were.”

    Soccer rules Houston’s school yards. That was Nicole Williamson’s experience. The ubiquity of unsupervised semi-organized soccer shaped almost every student’s experience of their time outside of class. As a migrant to Houston, this everyday school play made her school and her neighborhood different than the schools and neighborhoods she lived in before moving to Texas.

    Soccer became a way to view relationships in each neighborhood. When her family moved to a more affluent part of Houston, the games became more organized, more supervised, and with more parents present. Kids also had to pay to play, something no one seemed to do in her previous neighborhood. Nicole used soccer to provide an insight into the culture of each neighborhood, whether “as an isolating game (from my early perspective), an identifier (for my brother), or a way of life (for the kids that went to my school).”

    Locations Played:

    • Houston, TX
    • San Marcos, TX
    • Puerto Rico

    Additional Information