Bend It Like Janiah
The Point Breeze-based Anderson Monarchs are the Bad News Bears of girls' soccer. And they routinely beat the pants off their well-heeled suburban rivals.
Photographs by Jeff Fusco
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We're 10 seconds away from an explosion.
On a miserably hot spring evening in Warrington, near the Willow Grove air base, two teams of soccer-playing girls are spread out over a regulation-sized field.
A few minutes ago a couple of A-10 Warthog ground attack aircrafts screamed overhead, one frolicking around the other like a puppy around a mommy dog.
Such is the intensity these girls bring to the game that only the metaphor-hungry journalist looked up.
Warrington could be any soccer-crazed suburb in any city in the United States. Except in this particular game the players on one of the teams are non-white. In just about any country in the world that wouldn't be worthy of notice.
But this is America, where soccer is played by an estimated 24 million people, a vast number of them kids. And a huge percentage of those kids are girls.
At the youth level, soccer is a far more popular participant sport than baseball or football. Between them, United States Youth Soccer and American Youth Soccer boast more than 3.8 million registered players. This compares to 2.2 million Little League and 350,000 Pop Warner football players. And it's possible the United States might have more female soccer players than the rest of the world put together.
On this day one of the two teams competing is the Anderson Monarchs girls, made up of players from Point Breeze, West Philly, Germantown and other largely working-class parts of the city.
They've been coached by former lawyer Walter Stewart since 1998. They play soccer year-round, indoor and outdoor, with only a month off in the summer.
The Monarchs are one of Philadelphia's most successful teams in any sport. Chances are you've never heard of them.
Here's another stat.
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| Working-class heroines: Philadelphia's Anderson Monarchs prove that soccer isn't just for suburban white girls. |
Philadelphia Area Girls Soccer--the biggest local girls' league, which has been around in one form or another since the '80s--runs soccer leagues from as far away as Baltimore and Harrisburg, and from all over Philadelphia, a city that's 43 percent African-American. The league has 9,200 girls, 85 clubs and 556 teams. But only one of those teams is predominantly African-American.
The Monarchs.
In fact, as far as anybody can figure, the Anderson Monarchs are the only predominantly black girls' traveling soccer team in the country.
"I'd never come across a mostly African-American girls' traveling team in all my travels," says John Thomas, United States Youth Soccer's assistant director of coaching.
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1. kya said... on May 14, 2008 at 04:23PM
“i go to school with Janiah Moore she is one of my best friends”
2. soccerchick said... on Aug 15, 2008 at 09:16AM
“i went to a soccer camp Golden Goal Aug9 - 15 and they were there to and i remeber all the girls two were in the pics abpve. :)”
3. Katie said... on Aug 15, 2008 at 11:14AM
“I saw this team at a tournament not too long ago, they were really good! the U11 team won their division, and the U13 team got 2nd in their division.”
4. sara said... on Aug 15, 2008 at 04:00PM
“i was also at the camp(golden goal) from the highland hippos and i remember everyone of those girls. they were really good.”
5. colleen said... on Aug 15, 2008 at 07:14PM
“i was also at the camp (golden goal), playing for the marlboro panthers. i remember all those girls. they were amazing on the field and off. congratulations to both their teams, to U11 winning the championship and the U13 getting 2nd place.”
6. stacey francis said... on Dec 6, 2011 at 09:56PM
“SHES SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, TALENTED WHILE IN SOCCER SHES SO AMAZING RITE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS GO JANNNNIAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”