We had occasion this past weekend to meet our soccer counterpart from Wallowa County, Oregon. It was interesting to compare notes.Wallowa is on the northeastern corner of Oregon--the dry, open part of the state. It's a bit larger than Arlington (but aren't they all?):
Arlington = 26 sq. mi.
Wallowa = 3153 sq. mi.
So Wallowa has an area more than 100 times that of little ol' Arlington. Plenty of space for soccer fields!
When it comes to population, however, the shoe is on the other foot. Arlington, with roughly 210,000 residents, has 30 times the population of Wallowa, at about 7200.
Yet, Wallowa is soccer crazy. They have about 225 kids playing soccer there, compared to our 4500. Proportionately, they'd have about 7000 if they had Arlington's population!
It's all a matter of perspective. Ask elementary school soccer kids in Arlington to practice a mile from their school and we'll get a bunch of emails objecting. Of course, the way traffic is in Arlington, 1 mile could be 20 minutes.
In Wallowa, the teams often have to travel several Arlingtons away just to play each other in the regular County recreation league--ALL soccer in Wallowa is "travel" soccer! The Wallowa Valley Soccer Association has a nice website, however--one can't help but notice the barns and mountains in the background of the soccer fields.
Soccer in Wallowa is also a bargain: only $25 per player, less than half what we charge.
The great thing is that we put one of our third grade teams up against one of Wallowa's, the kids wouldn't miss a beat, quickly booting the ball around, having a good time--and wondering what the after game snack would be!
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