Quick and Dirty #1: Aurora, CO, is the Home of American Soccer
I have now entirely completed my USISSL database. Prior to this, for the sake of expediency, I had only the six state teams' data in the dataset. However, given recent progress (about which I will post later), I felt I could go ahead and add all of the players and their current MLS fantasy scores (which are found here).
Through this process, I discovered that I had initially inadvertently included a player on loan to a club outside of MLS. This means that my player total of 324 is now reduced to 323. I'm sure I'll catch other issues like this as I continue with this project.
Having completed the entire USISSL dataset, I was curious to see which US cities were the hometowns of the most MLS players. I ran a couple of lines of R code, and after a bit of trial-and-error, I came up with a data frame that answers that question.
This list includes all of the cities with 3 or more players who call those cities home. I wasn't sure which cities were going to top the list, but my money would not have been on two cities in Colorado and one in Missouri (even with St. Louis's long history with American soccer). And several other names on this list are surprising to me, too. Gahanna, OH? Federal Way, WA? And I think that Grapevine, McKinney, and Plano, TX, which between them account for the hometowns of 9 MLS players, all play each other in high school soccer each season (at least they used to). Such a hotbed of US soccer talent just north of Dallas (which itself is the hometown of 3 more MLS players). Maybe this is the influence of the Dallas Cup!
After this quick and dirty code session, I can't wait to see what else I can learn from this dataset.
Through this process, I discovered that I had initially inadvertently included a player on loan to a club outside of MLS. This means that my player total of 324 is now reduced to 323. I'm sure I'll catch other issues like this as I continue with this project.
Having completed the entire USISSL dataset, I was curious to see which US cities were the hometowns of the most MLS players. I ran a couple of lines of R code, and after a bit of trial-and-error, I came up with a data frame that answers that question.
> home_town<-arrange(count(league, Home.Town, Home.State), desc(n))
> head(home_town, 16)
Home.Town Home.State n
<fctr> <fctr> <int>
1 Aurora CO 4
2 Denver CO 4
3 St. Louis MO 4
4 Atlanta GA 3
5 Dallas TX 3
6 El Paso TX 3
7 Federal Way WA 3
8 Gahanna OH 3
9 Grapevine TX 3
10 Houston TX 3
11 Los Angeles CA 3
12 McKinney TX 3
13 Phoenix AZ 3
14 Plano TX 3
15 San Diego CA 3
16 Seattle WA 3
This list includes all of the cities with 3 or more players who call those cities home. I wasn't sure which cities were going to top the list, but my money would not have been on two cities in Colorado and one in Missouri (even with St. Louis's long history with American soccer). And several other names on this list are surprising to me, too. Gahanna, OH? Federal Way, WA? And I think that Grapevine, McKinney, and Plano, TX, which between them account for the hometowns of 9 MLS players, all play each other in high school soccer each season (at least they used to). Such a hotbed of US soccer talent just north of Dallas (which itself is the hometown of 3 more MLS players). Maybe this is the influence of the Dallas Cup!
After this quick and dirty code session, I can't wait to see what else I can learn from this dataset.
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