When I was six I really wanted to play football. But they didn’t have football for my age group and I wanted to do something, so I ended up trying soccer and didn’t return to football until high school. No one played soccer in my community in North Carolina. At the time, I lived in all black neighborhood and none of the other kids played soccer—it was just basketball and baseball. They didn’t even offer soccer in my community and I had to sign up for soccer in another neighborhood. I was usually the only black kid playing soccer as I went through youth soccer. I learned to live in two different worlds, the soccer world and my neighborhood/home world. In addition to the soccer teams I played on, I continued to played basketball and baseball with my peers in the neighborhood. In high school I played baseball, soccer and football. I was All-State in all three sports and didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I loved all three. Baseball ended up being the first sport I dropped. After high school graduation, I went to UNC Chapel Hill on a football scholarship as a kicker. Once I was there I walked on to the soccer team and ended up with a shared scholarship, which freed up scholarship money for both programs.
I did well academically. My parents weren’t athletes and my mother was a teacher, so their focus was always academics. My mother never played around when it came to grades and my responsibilities as a student. When I was applying to colleges, recruiters complimented me on my grades, noting that my academic success allowed me a wide choice of schools and increased my attractiveness for colleges and their athletic programs. I was an Academic All-American several times in college, and even at that level, I knew the expectations of me academically and strived to be a good student as well as a good athlete.
The deciding moment in my sports career was not what I expected. Both teams wanted me to specialized and focus on one sport, but I really enjoyed both and was content to work hard and play football and soccer throughout college. My freshman year I was warming up for annual Blue/White game in football and looked down and noticed my leg was five times its normal size. Earlier that week in soccer practice I made a tackle and cut my leg. It turned out that cut got infected and I spent the next two weeks in the hospital and narrowly avoided a leg amputation. Afterwards, I had to redshirt football that year but recovered in time to play soccer freshman year. That summer it was time to try out for the Olympic soccer team. The football coach said I couldn’t miss summer workouts if I wanted to be the kicker in the fall, which I would have to do to try out for Olympic soccer team. After talking to family and friends, I chose the once in a lifetime opportunity of trying out for the Olympic soccer team. My football coach told me it was a big mistake, that if I stuck with football I could be playing in NFL in a few short years. I made that 1996 Olympic soccer team where we went 1-1-1.
I think one of the biggest challenges for any young person is what your peers are doing. Back then there weren’t a ton of training opportunities for aspiring athletes like there are today, so a lot of your training and conditioning was stuff you had to do on your own. My buddies in my neighborhood always wanted to hang out. But my mother constantly reinforced for me that I had to be better than everyone else if I wanted to make these travel/elite teams, so good that the teams would have no choice but to pick me. So I learned to find the balance. If my buddies wanted to shoot hoops, I told them I would play with them if they played soccer or did conditioning with me.
When I was growing up, there was no soccer on TV to look at or pattern yourself after, so I didn’t have athlete role models. My parents were my role models. They were diligent and strict and they helped keep me in line. And even now my role models are still my parents. They were always at my games and my practices. My mother was the first one to school with any challenges, advocating for me and promoting success.
My most important professional accomplishment has to be playing in the World Cups because that is the highest level of achievement for our sport. As a competitive athlete, the goal is always to reach the top level and challenge yourself to perform well with the best of the best.
My most important personal accomplishment is graduating from college. It is important for me to have that to show my kids, proof that I practiced what I preach to them about academics. I wanted to be able to say that education was important and back it up. I want them to learn from my success and not from my mistakes.
The Eddie Pope Foundation teaches the virtues of spirit, community, and education to youths in underserved areas through the sport of soccer. I have always believed that soccer has power. The biggest thing to me is that soccer gives kids the ability to travel the world and experience different cultures and places. The first time I left the country was for soccer when I was fifteen years old. I went to Scandinavia, and I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to do that without soccer. For those who play soccer competitively, by the time you are done with college, you are so well-traveled. That’s irreplaceable. The cultural diversity, the people you meet along the way, trips to Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. You can’t find that at such a young age in any other sport.
I started the Eddie Pope Foundation because I wanted to be able to give other young people soccer. I was fortunate to find soccer, even in the random fashion in which I did. . I thought everyone should have the opportunity to play soccer for the other tools it brought to the table--education, health, afterschool activities, and a safe place. It was not cool to be smart in the black community when I was going through school, it was okay to fail academically. But as a soccer player and within my soccer community, I was complimented and encouraged to be smart. In the neighborhood, people often made fun of my sister because she was smart, they called her dictionary as an insult.
Additionally, I thought everyone should have access to soccer, not just one community. Although worldwide soccer is the sport of the poor, in America, soccer is a wealthy sport. In America, we organize soccer, and the minute something gets organized, it gets expensive. Fifteen hundred dollars a season for travel/comp soccer, plus your equipment and tournament fees, thousands of dollars on a single soccer season. Worldwide people play on the streets and get discovered and become professional soccer players, not here. I wanted kids here to have access to the sport so that they are involved in something and not hanging out in the street doing nothing. To stay in the Eddie Pope Foundation program participants have to do well in school. We are proud to say that we haven’t had one teen pregnancy amongst our participants in 12 years. Program participants are busy in those critical after-school hours, have good self-esteem, and are focused on specific goals. Kids are given prizes for academic accomplishments, not athletic accomplishments. Some kids in the program are becoming bilingual through their multicultural friendships developed with program peers from different communities, peers they may have never encountered otherwise.
For me, being a ‘Smart Guy’ was about choices I made at a young age. The decisions I made as a young man were smart decisions, those decisions put me in the positions I am today. I spend thousands of hours in my backyard kicking a soccer ball to develop my skills. Kids think they don’t have to make smart decisions until they are older but that’s not true. If you are not making smart decisions, you could very well be making bad/detrimental decisions. I made smart decisions when I was younger. The more we can help kids learn to make good decisions at young ages, the better.
I am excited about my Hall of Fame nomination. There weren’t a lot of African Americans in the Hall of Fame, there will be three of us now. Growing up, soccer was considered a ‘white boy’ sport. People were constantly asking me “why are you playing soccer?” There was constant judgment and criticism of me and my role as a soccer player. I am proud that I can be a role model for kids growing up who look like me and are told they can’t do something. When I introduce soccer to the young men in my program I am prepared for this pre-judgment. I have posters and pictures and tell them about the history of soccer in Africa. They are so proud after they learn about their history in soccer. They have confidence in knowing they are not the only one. Soon kids in inner city communities will see us being inducted and think that they can do it too--if you see it, then you can believe it. Being able to provide that, to open that door, is so important to me and makes me proud.
A Hall of Fame 'Smart Guy',
Eddie
Eddie Pope, a three time World Cup player, three time MLS Champion, with ten MLS All-Star team selections, and a role on the US Olympic soccer player was recently named to the USA Soccer Hall of Fame. Eddie has had an amazing soccer career as a player and continues to be involved with soccer in his position as MLS Director of Player relations and as the leader of the Eddie Pope Foundation.
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