In a Georgia Mill Town, Soccer Presents a New Opportunity

Tune in to “Monday Night Fútbol,” a high school recap program on WDNN, or study the mural on the side of the Oakwood Cafe, with its illustrated history of Dalton, which has long been known as “the carpet capital of the world.” (More than 80 percent of the tufted carpet manufactured in the United States is produced in and around Dalton.) Catherine Evans Whitener, commonly referred to as Dalton’s first lady of carpet, is depicted on the mural, but so is a soccer goalie.

Or visit James Brown Park, where “the cages,” as the retrofitted tennis courts are known, are packed with 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds playing rapid-fire soccer matches to five. Winners stay on.

Only then will you understand how this town of nearly 35,000 — now 53 percent Hispanic — became an unlikely center for America’s slow tilt toward soccer and why it now calls itself Soccer Town U.S.A.

It may not be as chest-puffing as the title of “home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States,” which Dalton held in the 1970s. It is not as sexy as “the hometown of the killer blondes,” as a headline in The Washington Post proclaimed in 1990 when a favorite daughter, Marla Maples, was involved with a married New York developer named Donald J. Trump.

Still, this new identity was hard-earned, not only on the soccer fields but also on the factory floors, town halls and neighborhoods whose demographics were upended.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/sports/soccer/dalton-ga-high-school-rivalry.html