Welcome back to our second installment of Weirdness of the Week! We were busy this past week doing our own Weirdness, and you’ll get to read about that sometime soon.
But in the meantime, here’s a collection of all the weird and fun things the lower-league soccer community has been up to during this quarantine period.
Toilet Paper Challenges
Basically, everyone is recording their attempt at a juggling challenge using a roll of toilet paper in lieu of a soccer ball; it’s gone viral because it features a quarantine theme, I suppose. Some people have done some really great tricks with the challenge, and others, like NY International FC of the Cosmopolitan Soccer League, are simply using the opportunity to enjoy themselves. A shoutout to the WPSL, as well, who have started a Tik Tok account with plenty of these challenges and many other videos sent in by their member clubs and fans.
Lower League eCup
This is probably more exciting than weird, but we think it fits. There’s a collection of nearly 120 lower-league soccer organizations, from media outlets to supporters groups to clubs themselves, that are participating in an all-encompassing league competition called Lower League eCup. It’s a brilliant concept being headed by Joe Meyer, who’s done an incredible job of getting this off the ground in a matter of a couple of weeks, uniting leagues and locales across the nation. It should be a great repreive from the chaos of the outside world for a little while, and a great way to keep watching the clubs we know and love!
SmallWorld will be participating in the Celebrity Cup to kick the eCup off, and like the rest of the tournament, it’ll be streamed live on both the eCup’s and my own Twitch channels. Mine is SmallWorldSoccer, and you can catch my match against Matt Kahla, the National Director of the UPSL, at 8:30 Eastern time tonight, March 28th! Make sure to cheer me on, as I’ll need all the support I can get to have a chance.
Icarus FC’s Mesopotamia Collection
If you haven’t heard of Icarus FC, they’re a soccer kit designing company that does *fantastic* work. Some of the most clean and creative kit designs I’ve seen at any level of soccer come from Icarus, and their most recent activity is no different. They created a fictional Mesopotamian League and filled it with what the kits of some fictional historic clubs in a league from Mesopotamia might have looked like. SmallWorld’s favorite is Babylon Akkadi, but all eight look great! A great, though somewhat weird idea to keep things exciting for a kit company, so hats off to them for the creativity.
Weirdest of the Weird
Remember the Connect 4 match from last WOTW? Yeah, so SmallWorld ended up in a match. We faced off against Lower League eCup’s Twitter account, which, it turns out, is secretly hiding a Connect 4 genius. Lower League eCup faced 8 different opponents in one day, and won all eight matches. We happened to be one of those victims, losing with just a few open spaces remaining. We’re proud of how close we came!
Also, one of the main supporters of SmallWorld March Madness, the single event that all of SmallWorld’s efforts have been poured into over the past week, is called GameOn: A Sports Podcast For Everyone. They have a great thing going on everything you can listen to a podcast on, but outside of that, they’re carrying the March Madness baton forward with a baseball edition. It’s not topically related to lower-league soccer, but it’s an awesome way to keep a love of sports going, and GameOn is doing his bracket with MiLB teams, the equivalent of lower leagues for baseball.
Well, that’s about all that’s weird and great about American lower-league soccer this week! Make sure to stay tuned to all the exciting things coming up this week, from the eCup to LowerLeagueUSA’s fan poll bracket to GameOn’s March Madness for minor league baseball.
See you tonight in the Celebrity Cup, and now more than ever:
Support local soccer, unify those around you, and seek out diversity!
Blessings,
Danny
smlwld soccer 