EU SOCCER

WAS SOCCER REALLY INVENTED IN PENSACOLA?

A LITTLE YELLOW JOURNALISM FROM LOCAL HISTORIAN GREGORY POTEMKIN.

NINE MILE SOCCER

The Pensacola Origin Of The Sport Of Soccer

By Gregory Potemkin

The word soccer brings to mind a strange period in Pensacola's long history. The fact the game was invented in this area is not something town fathers are particularly proud of mentioning. It's not a glamorous story in the least. Despite the best of intentions, Escambia University, bears some of the responsibility for what happened.

As the sports of football and baseball swept the area and catapulted Pensacola into national prominence, local people began looking for a pastime that less athletically gifted kids could play. The Physical Education Department of Escambia University undertook the task. Area kids in the neighboring town of Nine Mile had long had a bad reputation for watermelon stealing. University leaders hoped to turn the practice into a respectable sport. For years, young Nine Mile children had stolen melons from the terraced melon fields of the neighboring villages of Watermelon Hill, Cantonment and Pace. Watermelon Hill's name was later changed to Scenic Hill (and still later, Scenic Hills) during one of the frequent watermelon famines that periodically destroyed the melon harvest.

A Nine Mile youngster stumbles and falls as he attempts to capture a runaway melon. Other "sucker" players hurry to his aid.

A local "tough" intercepts a Nine Mile youth who has attempted to pick up his watermelon and run away. Such assaults were common.

Some kids were too uncoordinated to carry a watermelon and walk at the same time. They would nonchalantly roll a stolen melon with their feet through the tall grass in the unkempt fields separating Watermelon Terrace from Nine Mile. While this process had to be kept slow to prevent bruising the melons, it was probably just as fast and interesting as the game played today by something called MLS in America. Kids would often turn the event into a contest to see who could pilfer the most melons in a given period of time. The game was soon called "Sucker" by some of the tougher kids who often tormented the weaker kids. They would regularly promise the naive kids a big surprise if they would leave their melon and go into the woods and remove their pants and shirt. You guessed it. The conniving youngsters would quickly gather up the clothes and melons and run away yelling "Sucker." To this day, men—and Brandi Chastain—will follow this tradition and remove their shirts to celebrate a victory. At other times, the confrontation was more violent and the watermelons would be taken by force. It is believed that this violent early practice gave rise to the term sucker punch.

To accommodate the non athletic nature of participants, the original soccer field was about 10 yards long. Here an official from Escambia University oversees the placement of the melon prior to the start of play.

In one forgettable episode, Nine Mile battled a team from neighboring Scenic Hill for over 90 minutes before it was discovered the melon had rolled off the field shortly after the game began.

To thwart this growing criminal activity and discourage unsavory elements from coming to the area, local leaders turned this illegal pastime into a legal sport. They created mown fields for play and devised written rules. The game was quite simple. Teams would attempt to roll and propel a melon through a goal at the end of the field. Since the clumsy youngsters were prone to dropping (and thus bursting) a melon, it was decided that the hands would not be used. This was in keeping with the original practice of stealing a melon by rolling it with your feet in the tall grass. In the original form of the game, participants would roll the melon while pretending to be strolling—sometimes even whistling with hands kept in their pockets.

Police (striped hats) chase a rustler who has stolen a melon. Early attempts to brand melons with branding irons proved disastrous. Rustlers had to be caught in the act or they would claim they had merely captured a feral melon and thus be acquitted.

Range war! Cantaloupe herders clash with watermelon ranchers over Escambia River water rights. Such battles were common.

Watermelons were an important part of the regional economy. Watermelon wine makers dotted the countryside. On occasion, range wars would break out between cantaloupe herders and watermelon ranchers. Melon rustlers were a scourge as were the poachers who would take wild melons out of season. Unemployed locals would earn money by helping with the yearly melon drives—when the valued crop would be harvested and rolled toward shipping points. The fruit became a key economic factor. Rugged trail towns sprang up almost overnight along the routes used by the melon drovers. Milton's Melon (later: Milton) was one of the first. Another was Mary Esther. Esther, as educated people know, is Latin for melons. The town was originally called literally "Mary's Melons." For obvious reasons, it was later changed to Mary Esther. The names of surrounding settlements weren't always pleasant. One county has always been called Escambia. Escam is, of course, a psychiatric term for a person with a disorder characterized by melon envy—a fact that may or may not have been known to the Potemkin brothers when they named their university. Santa Rosa was named for Saint Rosa, the one time patron saint of people with Watermelon Fever—a still bothersome disease characterized by a protruding stomach and flabby thighs. It is largely incurable. Modern day victims can often be seen at local beaches hoping to achieve a folk remedy called the salt water cure. The Watermelon Fever malady is rarely fatal in itself. However, victims seeking the salt water cure have occasionally floated too far out into the Gulf and been harpooned by near sighted whaling boat captains.

The new sport remained somewhat localized in popularity until the idea was
adopted to use an inflated cow bladder to replace the easily damaged melon.

Once the inflated balls were introduced to replaces the melons, the speed of play was often something spectators could not stand. Similar comments are heard today about this sport.

This drawing captures the first successful attempt to "head" the ball through the goal. Though attempted numerous times during the melon era, it was not until the introduction of inflated balls that the maneuver was successful.

Eventually the watermelons would be replaced with inflated balls. Kicking would replace rolling to advance the sucker ball. The official name was changed to "Soccer" in an attempt to entice the more bookish and prissy children to participate. These kids soon began spending less time with the crude chemistry sets of their day. Many gave up their usual interests in playing chess and working with their abacuses. The slow nature of the game was especially important to children who didn't want to remove their pocket protectors before exercising. The game is still played in isolated pockets around the US. The American game is sometimes mistaken for open air Tai Chi classes and certainly competes well with the similarly paced hobby of watching paint dry.

An equally slow version of the activity (called strangely, fútbol), has taken root and become a very important sport throughout the rest of the world. Fútbol is a Latin word which is translated: "I'd rather be watching my feet grow." Occasionally, there have been news reports of a team actually scoring a goal in a game but such events remain rare. It is a game that encourages sloth. Referees discourage vigorous play by awarding yellow cards to energetic players. A player earning two yellow cards will trade them for a red card. This card entitles the recipient to rest for the remainder of the game.

The Melon Weevil would eventually find its way into the Panhandle and the industry would wither away. Today, the University Of West Florida occupies the land once known as the town of Nine Mile. The town was disbanded when the watermelon industry disappeared. The melon drives and range wars are relegated to the history books. Tales of the early years of the sport are now a part of folklore. Last week I saw youngsters gather in a local park to commemorate the sport's history by playing the game. Either that or I stumbled on some sort of Simon Says game where participants were told to roll a ball in slow motion with their feet.