Murphy – As the United States women’s national team tries to win an unprecedented third straight women’s world cup in Oceania while drawing record viewership back home, the situation for soccer is different in Cherokee County.
On a humid Tuesday afternoon, new Murphy men’s soccer head coach Andrew Zenobi leads a small group of athletes in post-workout stretching. It’s the end of another of the optional workouts for both the men’s and women’s program, which are held in the soccer field behind the Lowe’s that stands across from Murphy High School.
It’s a good sign that players are dedicating time during the summer to improve, though it’s also emblematic of the state of the sport in Cherokee County. There are people dedicated to help grow the sport and provide the best experience possible. The challenging part is there are several factors that make any small step forward feel like a victory.
The field behind Lowe’s hasn’t always been used for soccer. When Kim Brownlee first started coaching at Murphy in 2010, the soccer teams practiced on the field enclosed by the track and field. It was not ideal.
“It became very difficult because we were kicking balls into the water,” Brownlee said. “We had no fencing. We were just paying a lot of money for balls.”
Brownlee talked with then athletic director David Gentry, who said the school owned the lot behind Lowe’s. So the team moved there for practice, where it has been ever since. The high school programs have to share with the Cherokee County Soccer League, local recreation programs and youth football teams.
The youth football league has not been the best partner. At the workout, the field was set up with goals on either side, though another in a puzzling spot. There is a fence between the field and Lowe’s, and the goal was situated in between.
Without a true soccer facility, teams have had to get creative. The Cherokee County Soccer League has played all their games at Heritage Park in Andrews the past two years after their previous field at the former Coats American building in Marble was purchased by Core Scientific, which could not allow access to the area due to security concerns.
League director Christa Blackman said Andrews parks and recreation director James Ellis and Andrews town activities director Brian Wilson were initially skeptical on what soccer could bring to the park, but changed their minds when they saw how many people were attending games. Now, Blackmon said they’re looking to go after grants to professionally level the fields and upgrade the facility to make it more user friendly.
“They even admitted to not being big fans,” Blackman said of Ellis and Wilson. “As they watched us play, they said, ‘Wow you guys get a really big crows out here.’ They just became excited about how many people we have showing up every Saturday, because we really are one big huge family that shows up.”
Perceptions can change once people are exposed to the sport, though that isn’t easy in football-crazy Cherokee County. Girls soccer still has to compete with softball as a spring sport, though not in the same way boys soccer has to compete with football.
Coaches will try to get as many kids as possible to play since depth is crucial. History plays a part, too, as Smoky Mountain Conference teams have won a combined 38 state championships.
Soccer, on the other hand, did not have a state championship solely for 1A teams until 2001 for boys and 2007 for girls. Football has had a separate state championship for the four classifications since 1959.
That level of tradition is a big draw, especially with some kids who have had family members across generations play football. It’s something 2012 Murphy graduate Bianca Canizio saw firsthand when she moved to Cherokee County from south Florida. Canizio went on to be an All-American at Warren Wilson College and has played for the U.S. Virgin Islands’ national team.
The Smoky Mountain Conference is known for physicality and hard-nosed football. High-level soccer requires being physical and having tremendous endurance, but it doesn't necessarily show in the same way football does.
Canizio remembers being teased about soccer not really being a tough sport. She blames some of it on general teenage behavior, and some on just local ignorance.
“I played tackle football in full pads, and my brother was a football player,” Canizio said. “Yeah they’re fast, they’re strong, their agility is insane. But do that for 90 minutes, and then have skill and touch on the ball and be able to understand tactically what your team is doing. There’s a lot to it.”
Despite the passion some people in the county have for soccer, the lack of experience with the sport locally has a trickle-down effect. Blackman coaches two teams in the recreation league, while her husband, Israel, who has plenty of experience in the game, also coaches two teams. A few other coaches know the game, but Christa said sometimes with coaches for younger teams she just has to “give them the rules and hope for the best.”
The goal at the recreation level is still to have fun, but lack of skill development can be an issue if it continues through multiple age groups. With Andrews and Murphy both having middle school teams, that can lead to players who still need to learn basic skills at ages when that shouldn’t be an issue.
Mark Townsend, who previously was sports editor of the Cherokee Scout and has been around the game of soccer his entire life after growing up in England, has seen this both at the recreational and high school level.
As a youth coach, Townsend was frustrated at some coaches who prioritized winning at the cost of development. At the oldest age group before goalies are introduced, Townsend said one of the coaches in the league would just tell his kids to kick the ball all the way down the field into the goal.
He refused to let his own team do that, because he knew it wouldn’t be effective the next year. After getting crushed by that team, the roles were reversed the following year.
Townsend’s son, Zach, will be a senior on the Hayesville team this fall, and dad was still able to get the better of some of his teammates in one-on-one drills. Yes, they could dribble the ball and power past him, but he was still able to get the better of them a majority of the time using little things like body position and spacing on the field.
“It’s little things they see and nobody’s ever told them,” Townsend said. “And you’re trying to teach high school kids some of the basics of the game.”
When kids do show promise, Cherokee County is not in a great area to find better competition. The county is two hours from both Asheville and Atlanta, which have strong soccer communities. When Canizio moved to Murphy in 2007, she was on the cusp of playing for a big travel soccer organization in Florida.
She was so disappointed in the level of soccer here that she did not play during her sophomore year of high school. Instead, she played with workers from Monte Alban Mexican Restaurant in Andrews on a church field to stay fresh.
She ended up playing for Murphy as a junior and senior, while working individually with her dad, admitting her individual drive allowed her to catch up on the years of development she missed when going to college. Brownlee said she had two players interested in playing travel soccer this summer, but stopped due to the amount of driving. Blackman would like to see a travel program grow out of the recreation league, but would need someone else to run it.
The obstacles to progress for soccer in the county remain stubborn, but that won’t stop those invested in the sport. Blackman has taken the recreation league from being on its last legs in 2020 to having about 225 kids last spring.
In addition, Murphy had its first separate middle school boys and girls team in the past two years, while Andrews had a soccer team for the first time since 2017, as well as a middle school team. Tri-County Early College had both a boys and girls team for the first time ever last year.
That’s small steps compared to other sports, but enough for those that care to keep trying to move forward.
“I’ll do it until I can’t,” Brownlee said. “I’ll do it until it’s way better. I know it may not seem that way but from day one this is 100 percent more improved. It’s growing.”