College Soccer: the Beginnings
As the games got more and more violent, soccer was at times suppressed by English sheriffs who followed royal orders decrying the sport as a useless activity. King Henry IV and Henry VIII passed laws against the sport, and King Edward III passed laws that threatened imprisonment to anyone caught playing soccer.These laws, however, failed to curtail the popularity of the sport, which earned official sanction in England by 1681. The game had become so popular by 1800s that, in certain annual contests in the northern and middle regions of England, large mobs roamed and raged through towns and villages during play. In 1829, an account of such a match in Derbyshire described people with "broken skins, broken heads, torn coats and lost hats."
The documentation of the development of soccer in England shows Eton College with the earliest known rules of the game in 1815. This supports the implication that, until then, chaos prevailed during matches, as evidenced by the recorded laws that were meant to stem the violence that resulted during the matches.
Soccer is now a regulated sport with countless fans across the world. Countless capable young athletes are overlooked every year simply because they didn"t submit their athletic resume to the colleges suited for them, or left out vital information that would have otherwise caught the attention of college coaches and representatives of college soccer teams. Moreover, many colleges simply don"t bother to allocate all of their soccer recruiting funds because fitting athletes failed to approach them during college soccer recruiting.
The Internet has proved to be a useful venue for both athletes and coaches looking for promising players to participate in college soccer teams. D1Athletes is an online community wherein athletes and coaches alike can share and exchange information they need on college soccer recruiting and college soccer teams. D1Athletes offers them a place to build an online presence and gain important public exposure.