When I was in third grade, I was all about extra curricular activities. I was in Girl Scouts, baton twirling and, despite my horrible coordination, my parents signed me up for soccer.

But a season of watching me walk around the soccer field talking to people instead of actually playing the sport was far too painful for my parents (ahem, father). Needless to say, I wasn’t allowed to sign up again, but I was okay with it. Soccer, at that time, didn’t really do anything for me.

It didn’t turn into a love of mine until four years ago when I was in Germany and watched their soccer team enter the semifinals of the 2010 World Cup. Once I learned the rules of the game and actually paid attention, I couldn’t get enough of the sport that I hated to play, but now loved to watch.

I anxiously awaited the Women’s World Cup two years ago and the World Cup again this year. I made brackets. I lost four followers on Twitter during the Belgium v. USA game after sending out 12 soccer related tweets. And you know what? #sorrynotsorry

So do I really have to go into how peeved I was when Ann Coulter had the audacity to say that our nation’s growing interest in soccer is “a sign of the nation’s moral decay?” Hating on the entire sport and citing its genesis in our country as unnecessarily foreign, she angered just about every soccer fan in the United States.

Let’s start with one of her overwhelmingly ignorant comments. Towards the end of her article, Coulter promised, “No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.”

Soccer is the only sport that comes to mind that has universal appeal. Coulter is right in the sense that soccer is adorned by people across the globe, but she underestimates the stake that Americans have in it.

Baseball might be one of America’s favorite past-times, but playing soccer is almost like a rite of passage for every child. No matter how poorly you might have played, you probably played at some point.

Playing on a children’s team provides a first real sense of teamwork for a lot of youngins. You need to learn how to communicate, work under pressure, think ahead and work across different obstacles. And those are just the residual skills that you get. That doesn’t even touch the athletic skills that you start developing when you begin at a younger age.

And that’s just when we’re talking about playing, versus watching.

Two of Coulter’s noted problems with soccer is the many scoreless ties and that “there are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child’s fragile self-esteem is bruised.”

But really, during child’s play, no sport has accountability, heroes or losers. That comes with more evolved players, bringing us to the World Cup.

In the USA v. Belgium match, our goalie and our sub, Tim Howard and DeAndre Yedlin, were the two biggest heroes I’ve ever seen. In the Germany v. Brazil game, Toni Kroos scored twice in three minutes, Andre Schurrle scored twice in ten. And I don’t want to point any fingers, but any goalie and defense pairing that lets in seven goals seems kind of like a group of losers to me.

Soccer jargon aside, if you think a growing soccer fan base is a sign for the way our nation is going, run for cover. The Germany v. Brazil game was the most talked about sports match on Twitter ever. More than any World Series or Superbowl (and my phone was dead so I didn’t have anything to do with it! But again, #sorrynotsorry.)

People everywhere respect and adore the game of soccer, whether you’re watching or playing, and it provides a universal bond.

Coulter is wrong. Our growing love for soccer doesn’t signal our moral decay. If anything, it’s a sign of our growth in teamwork. And with the possibility of the United States winning back the World Cup hosting slot in 2022, it’s a sport that is here to stay.

Emma is a sophomore in LAS. She can be reached at [email protected].