Something else that happened on the craptastic day wasn’t so craptastic but rather funny. My little soccer girl came over to me and said, “The ref told me that my cleats are baseball cleats and that he almost wasn’t going to let me play!” This was a new one as I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of neon purple baseball cleats…remember this picture of the girls’ new cleats?
I stopped myself as I was about to give the referee the contact information for Nike so that he could let them know that they are incorrectly marketing their cleats. But then I remembered that I’m no expert either, so I thought I’d look up the difference between baseball and soccer cleats. Here’s what I found out…
Toe Cleat
The main difference between baseball and soccer cleats is the cleat pattern on the bottom of the shoe. It is illegal to have a “toe cleat” in soccer, which would be located directly underneath the middle toes. This is mostly for safety purposes because the toe cleat could cause more injury in soccer where there is much running and sliding.
information from Livestrong.com
Here’s the closest pair of purple baseball cleats I could find…yep, they look exactly like my girl’s cleats (rolling my eyes). Nice metal toe cleat.
Image from baseballcleat.com
Evidently the ref also told little soccer girl that the shape of her cleats were wrong and that they should be round. Hmmm….sounds like a whole different post. Fortunately he let her play with the “marginal” cleats and she played a great game.
Do these look marginal to you?? To quote our coach, “What a nugget!”