SOCCER KIDS HAVE A BALL.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

Among the clump of 4-year-old soccer players who swarmed over a rainbow-colored ball last week at Roosevelt Middle School, sending it in random directions off ever-churning cleats, one youth emerged as particularly skilled.

That was Hunter DeShaw, a curly-haired boy of complete concentration. On three occasions in a row he freed the ball from the wandering mass and deposited it in the opponents' goal.

His motivation was simple: "I get M&Ms for being good," DeShaw said, then hid his face against his mother's leg.

Heady days for a sport in which you use your head. Soccer is surging across the nation and across Eugene-Springfield, buoyed by star power and success at the upper echelons and, at the youngest level, by the fact that it's just plain easy for little kids to kick a ball.

In "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization," author Franklin Foer found that, between 1987 and 2000, the American teens playing baseball fell 47 percent; by 2002, meanwhile, 1.3 million more U.S. kids were playing soccer than Little League.

Between 1987 and 2003, the number of Americans age 6 and older who played baseball or football dropped, while the number of soccer players jumped 15 percent, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

Soccer's rising popularity is tied, in part, to achievement: The U.S. women's team followed 1999's stunning World Cup victory with a gold medal at the Summer Olympics.

America also has laid claim to a soccer phenom who packs potential talent and appeal comparable to Pele, the game's all-time great: 15-year-old Freddy Adu has, for the time being, shunned soccer's bigger European stage to play for D.C. United in the nation's capital.

In Eugene-Springfield, a booming Hispanic population accounted for many of the 300-plus players in the adult Liga Latina Manuel Cantoran league this past summer. League President Mario Lobo Hernandez said growth is limited mostly by field space.

Soccer also is the engine that drives Kidsports, sports manager Natalie Medina said.

Soccer players account for 34 percent of the 19,000 memberships in the youth sports organization, which also runs five other sports. More than 3,000 kids from kindergarten through eighth grade are playing in the fall league, which ends Oct. 24.

Even in Creswell (population: 3,990), soccer is a kick for kids - the spring and fall sign-ups totaled 350, well above basketball and T-ball, said Robbie Petetit, youth sports director for the YMCA, which organizes the program.

At Kidsports' Soccer Tots program at Roosevelt, parent-coordinator Barb Smith explained the game's appeal in terms any parent can understand: "It's an opportunity for every kid that's out here to get their foot on the ball," she said. "Any child can come out and play soccer with a good degree of success."

Behind Smith, a handful of eighth-grade girl soccer players worked last week with 30 or so 4-year-olds in uniforms of orange, green, yellow and red.

"Look at those shin guards," one woman said. "They're bigger than he is!"

The girls led the tots through running and kicking drills with varying degrees of success, but for parents such as 39-year-old Carla DeShaw of Eugene, Hunter's mother, the level of skill wasn't as important as the level of fun.

"It's not competitive at this point - well, it's not supposed to be," DeShaw said, chuckling.

When Hunter started in soccer a year ago, he had trouble focusing on the game, DeShaw said. But after a year in the league - and plenty of practice with an older brother - Hunter had transformed himself into a clear goal-scoring threat among these post-diaper players.

Not all the tots take so happily to the sport, however.

One boy dissolved into tears at midfield after another player accidentally brushed his ear, and another clung to his mother on the sideline while she tried in vain to sell him on the sport.

Parent Scott Huette, 34, of Eugene experienced something similar with his son, Sevrin.

The boy started with Soccer Tots as a shy 3-year-old apt to wander off the field.

But as a 4-year-old in his third season, Sevrin "jumped right in" and was kicking and running with the best of them, Huette said.

At this young age, kids are learning to detach from their mom or dad long enough to take direction from somebody else, and that can be hard for them, Huette said.

Still, soccer gave this father and son an excuse to get out on a sunny day, to a field and a sport that Huette described as fundamentally kid-friendly.

"Soccer is a little more to the root of what it is to be a child, in some ways," Huette said. "You take your foot and you kick a ball - it's almost a more natural thing for a kid to do."

SOCCER TOTS AND UP

Kidsports runs soccer programs in the spring and fall for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. For more information, call 683-2374.