December 10 (1930)

Boys’ high school soccer in St. Louis gains momentum. The winter of 1930-31 will see six St. Louis high schools fielding soccer teams. CBC and McBride compete in the Muny League’s Junior Division. Country Day, John Burroughs and Principia play in the ABC League. Chaminade operates independently with a schedule envisioned to consist of six or eight games. “It begins to appear that St. Louis’ preparatory schools are taking soccer seriously,” future U.S Soccer Hall of Fame journalist Dent McSkimming writes in the Dec. 10, 1930, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. McSkimming notes that “except for basketball, the local public high schools have no team athletic activity in the winter months. All have fields available for soccer.” While CBC had been fielding high school-aged teams that played club and church opponents since the 1880s, interscholastic high school soccer was slow to develop until the 1930s. McKinley fielded a team in 1912, and Soldan and Yeatman scheduled a soccer match against each other in 1916. Chaminade and McBride were playing soccer by 1926. Country Day, John Burroughs and St. Louis U. High had teams in 1927. The Post-Dispatch carried a brief account of a girls’ high school soccer game between University City and Visitation played on Nov. 12, 1928. Boys’ high school soccer will grow steadily thereafter. Newspaper reports will show South Side Catholic (today’s St. Mary’s High School) and Central Catholic of East St. Louis playing soccer in the 1933-34 season and Normandy fielding a soccer team in 1936-37. The Catholic Youth Council will begin its annual high school Christmas tournament in 1955, which many will consider determines the state high school championship because few, if any, high schools play soccer outside of St. Louis. Missouri will begin an official state soccer championship tournament in the 1968-69 season. Illinois will follow in 1972. High school soccer will be a winter sport, no matter the weather, until Missouri moves high school boys’ soccer to the fall in 1975. Missouri begins state championship soccer tournaments for girls in the spring of 1985. Illinois starts girls’ state soccer tournaments in the 1987-88 academic year.