“Strong traditions of civic engagement—voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and literary circles, Lions Clubs, and soccer clubs—were the hallmarks of a successful [democratic] region [of Italy]”. - Robert Putnam
Soccer was a new sport in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. The coach was a German national who had played at East Stroudsburg College, which was then a leading national soccer power. His name was Karl Dickl. He had us run mile after mile in the late August heat and then compete against one another for a spot on the team.
As a child I had lived in a Philadelphia suburb filled with Germans and Poles and Italians. My older brother, Gary, had played in sixth grade recess with kids from a local German soccer club, and had gotten the whole neighborhood involved in playing in our backyard. We played soccer from the second we got out of school until it was too dark to see. Some of us knew how to juggle the ball 200 times or more without letting it hit the ground. I could do about a hundred. I learned how to kick the ball in a line drive just above the grass. I could hit a bucket fifty feet away nine times out of ten. When the season started in tenth grade, two hours north in Stroudsburg, I could hit the crossbar from the midfield. Because of Coach Dickl, many local kids had played soccer, and many had gone on to play successfully at the collegiate level.
What was created, however, was not merely lethal soccer prowess, but a lasting community of young men that included hundreds of kids who, as grown men, are all still friends. They have worked in the business community together as bankers, laborers, owners of vast lumber yards and architects and doctors, and they still get together to watch soccer on television.
