Residents should get on FireBall bandwagon

A big event will be taking place today.

The Augusta FireBall United Soccer Club will play its first home game at Patriots Park at 5 p.m.

My advice to the community is to go out and support the team.

Some people will argue that soccer is a niche sport that will never be embraced by the masses. Others argue that soccer, the fastest-growing youth sport in America, is the future of sports in this country.

Neither argument matters.

Go watch the FireBall because it is a sports franchise that everyone can support. It is a chance for all of those who support Greenbrier and Lakeside and Evans and Harlem and Augusta Christian and Augusta Prep to come together and support a team.

The FireBall play in the United Soccer League's Premier Development League.

The league is made up of 54 teams, and rosters are mostly comprised of collegiate players.

The league is below Major League Soccer and the United Soccer League's First and Second Divisions.

That would make it the equivalent of Double-A baseball. But there are only 33 soccer teams above the PDL level (12 in MLS and 21 in USL), so there are many elite players in the league and on the team.

Former Richmond Academy stars Cline Beam and Havird Usry (arguably the two top prep players in the area in the past two years) will play for Augusta.

If nothing else, just go to see what the team has to offer. For the first time, Columbia County can root, root, root for the (professional) home team.

Holder says no

When the Thomson High School baseball coaching job came open recently, many thought Thomson football assistant Terry Holder would be a no-brainer for the job.

Holder's credentials are undisputable: eight state titles in 12 seasons between 1988 and 1999 with Evans and Greenbrier.

But Holder turned the job down.

When I ran into him at the Evans-Etowah baseball game, Holder said he didn't take the job because he didn't feel like he could give the five years it would take to rebuild a program like the Bulldogs.

Holder said he is content with teaching weight-lifting at Thomson Middle and said he wanted to coach football there to work with the pupils in his weight-lifting classes.

Soccer revision

It was brought to my attention recently by former Evans High School soccer player Justin Goolsby that the 2005 Evans soccer team did not have the best record in school history, as we reported recently.

The 1999 Evans team went 15-1-1 before losing in the state quarterfinals. The 2005 team did, however, make the deepest run ever in state playoffs.