‘I really thought I was done playing soccer’: Tuskegee’s new soccer program is opening doors for Black student-athletes
TheGrio...
Tuskegee University is launching its first men’s and women’s soccer teams, creating new opportunities for student-athletes at HBCUs.
When Parrin Robinson committed to Tuskegee University during his senior year of high school he accepted that his time playing soccer beyond an extracurricular club had come to an end. This is a reality many students have had to come to terms with when choosing a college.
“I have some friends and teammates personally that I know that didn’t really go to the school that they wanted to because there wasn’t a soccer program there,” incoming freshman Daeyciné “DJ” Robinson told theGrio.
However, now for the first time in its 145-year history, Tuskegee University is bridging that gap. This season, the historic HBCU in Alabama, located down the road from where the Tuskegee Airmen once learned to fly, is fielding its first-ever men’s and women’s soccer teams. And the group of players and coaches building the program from scratch is betting it will be more than a footnote in the school’s storied history.
“There are only 19 men’s programs in the country at HBCUs, which is crazy to me,” Tuskegee’s men’s soccer coach Matthew Tarpley explained. “It’s a lot of pressure on our kids and our university to set the standard, to create a blueprint that other HBCUs can follow so that they begin their soccer programs. But it’s a challenge that we’re up for.”
While players like DJ and Parrin recognize the significance of being part of the inaugural team and the potential for professional opportunities, their focus extends beyond that.
“I don’t really focus much on being a pioneer. I want to set a message. I want people to be able to look up to me and be like, ‘Wow! Like he was able to go and play soccer at a school he didn’t expect to be able to play that at,’” Parrin explained. “When I first came to the school, I really thought I was done playing soccer. I just thought I would end up playing soccer for fun after that. So being given the opportunity to play soccer now is really special to me personally… especially in Black-dominated spaces, I haven’t been able to express that kind of side of myself, like playing soccer in a space like that.”
That tension of choosing between the HBCU experience and the sport you love is exactly what inspired Brian Edgton to document the program in his docuseries “Unveiling History.” As a longtime referee, soccer dad and HBCU advocate, he recalls watching the same heartbreak play out season after season.
“Year after year, I had so many kids come up to me and say, ‘Well, I’m done playing soccer because I want to attend an HBCU, and the opportunities just aren’t there.’ That’s when the light bulb went off,” he said explaining the ethos behind the series.
Just as Edgton hopes the film will spotlight the possibilities at the HBCU, Parrin hopes it will encourage more people to try out the sport. For DJ, a freshman on the women’s team who grew up in Maryland playing club soccer where she was often one of only one or two Black players, Tuskegee offered something her earlier teams never did.
“Coming here, it was like a breath of fresh air. Like you’re just welcomed. Everybody just gets along faster… It was just like family,” she said. “I really hope that just gets captured, so everybody can see that it’s nothing to be scared of.”
Women’s head coach Coach Stevens, who has spent more than a decade building programs at HBCUs, sees the launch as part of a larger shift, one still working to close a longstanding gap. The next challenge, he said, is recruiting top talent to HBCU programs so they can compete with powerhouse schools, pointing to programs like Alcorn State as a model. “We’re trying to build something like that here,” Stevens said, “to where we are respected as one of the top HBCU programs.”
If the early response is any indication, the appetite is there. Tarpley revealed he fields dozens of emails a day from hopefuls around the world. “The response to us starting our program has been overwhelming. I get 20, 30, 40 emails a day from really talented players all over the country and globally that are excited and want to come be a part of what we’re building here at Tuskegee.”
Coming off the World Cup, which reshaped how Americans view the sport, Edgton, Stevens, and the student-athletes echoed the excitement they’ve received from alumni. However, Stevens says his focus is on getting a few wins under their belt so they can build a foundation that will hopefully lead to conference championship wins and eventually the NCAA tournament.
When asked where they hope the program will be in three years, the players and coaches described a foundation they expect to outlast them. Perrin hopes to see the HBCU soccer space grow to welcome “a whole bunch of different people that want to enjoy soccer and just be in the HBCU space.” Meanwhile, DJ is excited to see the team shed its underdog label entirely: “I would hope Tuskegee goes from ‘they have a new soccer program’ to ‘they have a program, period.’”
However, for Edgeton, looking back at footage of the inaugural teams practicing for their first scrimmages, the power of this moment is not lost on him.
“Tuskegee is a place where the students built the bricks. They literally built bricks, and they used those bricks to build the buildings of this campus, and that’s the legacy that these kids are stepping into,” he concluded. “Tuskegee is a place where we make a way out of no way. And that’s exactly what these kids are doing.”