There's A Reason Your Youth Soccer Friends Stick For Life

There’s a viral TikTok theory that says the friendships that last more than seven years have the most potential to span a lifetime. According to legitimate research, every seven years, due to lifestyle changes and personal growth, people may phase out the relationships no longer serving them. And while that’s been peer-reviewed, may I suggest another friendship theory for the FYP? The “soccer friends theory” — if someone saw you accidentally breaking a girl’s arm and didn’t think you’re a bad person, or together you had to run punishment laps, you’re probably going to stay friends for a long time.

Case in point: My group chat of 10 friends from my hometown is active on a weekly basis, which sometimes surprises people. Six of them are my “soccer friends,” which sounds silly to say as an adult who hasn’t worn a pair of cleats and played with them in over a decade. But soon we’ll have been friends for longer off the field than on it, and perhaps it’s all thanks to what we learned as teammates.

I started playing in kindergarten because my parents wanted me to socialize with other kids. Somewhere between the halftime orange slices and out-of-town tournaments, I guess we decided, “Hey, we actually really like each other outside of just running around on a field for 90 minutes.”

One time, one of my teammates was so sunburned from vacation she had to wear a bikini top under her sports bra. She probably could have bailed on practice but instead made it a point to show up for the rest of us. Another time, when we played our league’s boys’ team for some friendly competition, I got a black eye right before middle school graduation. (Thanks, James!) I could have been a little less intense, sure, but as coaches love to say: How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Like teams of all kinds aim to do, we quickly learned how to overcome tough days, show up for one another, and work together regardless of how a game was going.

As we’ve grown up, we’ve leaned on each other while bouncing back from losses far more serious than a qualifying match. We’ve celebrated personal wins — big moves, new jobs, tons of weddings — with one another, too. Today our common goal is less about scoring and more about staying close as our lives take different turns, even without the help of an organized practice schedule. In doing so, we’ve bypassed the seven-year theory by a long shot.