PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Many people are focused on watching World Cup matches, but in North Texas, the story is also happening off the field. For years, communities in the area have been building a soccer culture to develop players and the fans. There's a new podcast from member station KERA called When The World Comes To Texas. It looks at what happens when the world's biggest sports event comes to a place better known for American football. Ron Corning and Miranda Suarez are the hosts. Welcome.
MIRANDA SUAREZ, BYLINE: Hey, Pien, thanks for having us.
RON CORNING, BYLINE: Yes, thank you, Pien.
HUANG: So the World Cup has finally arrived in Dallas. You have hosted two games already. There are many more to come. I'm wondering what it feels like to have the World Cup in town. Miranda, do you want to kick us off?
SUAREZ: Yeah, I was actually lucky enough to go to the England-Croatia game on Wednesday.
HUANG: Ooh.
SUAREZ: And the energy was really just unreal. The importance of it, the immediacy of it is so obvious, and then that celebration is spilling out everywhere else. Like, there's a free watch party for all the games pretty much every day at Fair Park in Dallas. And Thursday night at the Mexico-Korea game, thousands and thousands of people gathered in Fair Park to watch the game, to celebrate at this free event. So it's become a really big deal across the region.
HUANG: So Texas is known for being football country, but on the podcast, you note that soccer didn't just show up suddenly with the World Cup. I'm wondering, Ron, what you've learned about the soccer culture that's been building in Texas.
CORNING: Well, there are two things sort of happening concurrently, right? You have the business of soccer and sort of building out what that looks like for professional teams and FC Dallas, which is our team here, and the youth camp and so forth, which is sort of fostering players early on.
What we're seeing, though, is that the culture is very much in the streets and in neighborhoods in ways that we hadn't quite realized until we started having these conversations. Hugo Gonzalez is the director of Street Soccer in Dallas. He's a one-man machine, and when we posted clips of him, they sort of went viral with people saying he's a hometown hero, Hugo's the man. So we're starting to see and realize that this has been happening sort of under our nose, really, but we are so sports-minded and focused on football and basketball and even hockey that I think this is such unique opportunity for us to sort of awaken ourselves and our audience to what's happening here with soccer culture.
HUANG: Miranda, one of the people that you spoke with provides a service announcing soccer games for the blind. I'm wondering what goes into it.
SUAREZ: Yes, his name is Elliott Stockdale. He is the founder of Hear Sport. And basically, his whole mission is to make the live soccer game experience more accessible to people with low vision. So, you know, when people go to a game, he's in their ear not just commentating, like, what you actually hear on the pitch. He also has to keep in mind, what are the players looking like as they're doing it? Are there people holding flags in the stands? Are people cheering? Even after a game, like, are they lighting off fireworks? All of that is in his wheelhouse. And you can listen to Stockdale do it for us. In the studio, we gave him a clip of a goal for him to commentate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
ELLIOTT STOCKDALE: The corner flag on this near side - jubilation from the players, smile across their faces, flags waving in the stands, red and white across a sea of flags really for FC Dallas. And they lead 37 and a minute's gone on the clock. How's that?
SUAREZ: And that...
STOCKDALE: Will that do?
CORNING: And the podcast hosts go wild.
(LAUGHTER)
SUAREZ: Yeah, and in that clip, you can just really hear the difference, like I said, between traditional sports commentary and his very specific type of commentary, and that was awesome to learn more about.
HUANG: The podcast is called When The World Comes To Texas. What was the opportunity that you saw in making this podcast at this particular time? Ron?
CORNING: I think, Pien, we saw an opportunity here to not just cover the business of soccer in North Texas - although we do that - but an opportunity to really understand what this means for multiculturalism in North Texas, accepting folks from all over the world here, and then seeing people who are from other places - how this is really an opportunity for them to coalesce and be unified. They say soccer is their common language, and we saw that in spades.
HUANG: Ron Corning and Miranda Suarez are the hosts of When The World Comes To Texas, all about the World Cup arriving in host city Dallas this summer. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Ron and Miranda, thank you to you both.
CORNING: Thanks, Pien.
SUAREZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
