Sept. 29 (1893)

The Sodality League, the forerunner of today’s St. Louis Catholic Youth Council, is organized following an informal series of baseball games the previous summer. Young men’s sodalities, or religious guilds, from six parishes (St. Alphonsus, St. Bridget, St. Kevin, St. Malachy, St. Patrick and St. Teresa) and Christian Brothers College comprise the league’s soccer operations under the name of the Sodality Foot Ball League. The league cleverly secures three of the best soccer fields in St. Louis at Sportsman’s Park, Compton Avenue Park and CBC. Newspapers laud the league’s competitiveness, clean play, and drawing power. “In addition to the fact that the games are in all respects equal to those witnessed here in other years, there is an entire absence of brutality and pugilistic play, which makes the sport all the more enjoyable and none the less entertaining,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will write in its Nov. 26, 1893, edition. A crowd of 2,000 will see St. Teresa beat CBC, 3-1, in a Sodality Foot Ball League match on Nov. 5, 1893. St. Teresa will emerge as the dominant team in St. Louis during the early 1890s, winning four city championships. The CYC, which traces its lineage to the Sodality League, will help drive the development of St. Louis youth soccer players from the 1940s to the present. The CYC will be the USA's largest soccer organization with 447 teams by 1966.