With the last guaranteed home game of the Chattanooga Football Club season less than 90 minutes away Tuesday evening, Michele Burks of Morrison, Tenn., stood in line with the rest of her family, waiting to become the first general-admission ticket holder to enter Finley Stadium.
“I just love the spirit, their spirit,” she said of the Scenic City’s National Premier Soccer League team. “They work so hard for us. They give everything. When the season ended last year, I left here in tears.”
There were nearly 5,000 in the stands for a Fourth of July sporting event that didn’t include fireworks. And a lot of them were just like Burks, her husband Cameron and their children, Sydney and Ceth. They were there because they care.
Maybe not all of them care enough to make a 2 1/2-hour round trip from Morrison to the Scenic City. Most are local, such as proud Chattahooligan Braden Morris of St. Elmo, who pushed his infant daughter Brigid in a stroller while wearing a kilt.
“Personally, I think soccer is more community-oriented than baseball,” he said when asked if soccer was becoming as much a part of the Fourth of July in our town as America’s pastime. “And that’s not to say anything bad about baseball. But I think soccer appeals to a much broader base of cultures.”