BOONE—For three Appalachian State University professors, what started as a simple desire to coach their daughters on a U10 Watauga County Parks and Recreation team turned into a three-year exploration of the cultural landscape of local soccer.

The result is a 74-minute documentary video titled “Offside(s): Soccer in Small Town America.”

The documentary will be screened Oct. 7 at 6 p.m. in room 114 Belk Library and Information Commons at Appalachian. Drs. Bruce Dick, Andres Fisher and Gregory Reck wrote, videoed and edited the video. Kemp Jones of Athens, Ga., wrote the original musical score. They will be available for questions and answers following the screening.

Dick is a professor in the Department of English. Fisher is an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Reck is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology.

Shot on a shoestring budget funded by a small grant from the university, the story begins with Dick, Fisher and Reck who volunteer to coach their daughters’ local soccer team. The video progresses through an ever-expanding examination of the nature of organized youth soccer.

Using the local community as a case study, the documentary is a humorous, heart-warming, and critically analytical portrayal of the cultural landscape of soccer – partly an historical retrospective, partly a cultural analysis, and partly a human story of parents-turned-soccer coaches and the children they get to know.

The event is sponsored by Appalachian’s Center for Documentary Studies.  For more information, call 262-2295 or 262-6397.

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