The reverberations from the United States 2-1 defeat to Trinidad & Tobago that kept them out of the World Cup for the first time in 30 years were felt all over the country, including in Limestone County.

While they were disappointed in the outcome, local soccer coaches are still encouraged by the growth of the sport in the U.S. and hopeful the United States can learn from this failure and come back stronger in the future.

“It’s really sad they’re not going to be going and very shocking,” East Limestone girls soccer coach Brad Carwile said. “It seemed like everything was going to go well, but they haven’t been playing well lately and anything can happen in soccer.”

Longtime Athens High boys soccer coach Ron Oakley said he wasn’t able to watch the game, which wasn’t on a major television network, but was stunned when he found out the result.

“I was very disappointed,” he said. “I’m a patriotic rooter for the U.S. and I like to see us do well in everything. Nationally, we have invested a lot of time, effort and money into getting better, and we certainly are better than we used to be, but it’s obviously disappointing to have a failure like this.”

However, despite the setback, both coaches are still encouraged by the growth of the sport in America. As little as 25 years ago, soccer was a niche sport that didn’t have much of a foothold in the United States. Now, it’s the fastest growing youth sport in America. Soccer fans also have a multitude of options to watch the sport on television, with NBC Sports televising the English Premier League, Fox Sports televising the German league and ESPN and Fox both televising the U.S.-based Major League Soccer.

Both coaches said since they’ve been in their positions, they have seen soccer grow exponentially in the area.

“Just in the north Alabama area you’ve got several programs in the area that are very good,” Oakley said. “Years ago, when you mentioned (high school) soccer in north Alabama, you thought of Grissom and you’d struggle to think of anybody else. Now, you’ve got Cullman as a perennial power, Fort Payne has won championships and Florence is a very strong program.”

Oakley also said the respect the sport receives has greatly increased in recent years.

“Years ago, you might consider soccer a distant cousin in the athletic family and now we’re part of the family,” Oakley said. “Athens High has always treated us with respect as a legitimate sport, but some schools haven’t had that kind of privileged. It seems everyone across the board now is widely respected.”

Carwile has coached at East Limestone for 17 years and has seen the number of soccer programs in Limestone County grow by leaps and bounds since he started.

“When I first started there were only two (soccer) teams in the entire county,” Carwile said. “Every school in the county has a team now and we just started a county tournament two years ago. Soccer has come a very long way in a short time.”

While both coaches said the United States’ failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia was a setback for the program, they said it is something that can be overcome.

“Even Alabama and Auburn occasionally lose football games and it’s not the end of the world,” Oakley said. “It seems like it, but they go back to the drawing board and continue to make progress. Like Coach (Nick) Saban says, it’s a process. You take some dings along the way, but I think they’ll bounce back and be even better. You don’t tend to learn a lot from victories, but you learn a whole lot from losses.”