Pickup Artist

Gwendolyn Oxenham was a college soccer player of consequence: She was a starter and leading goal-scorer at Duke who had a stint playing professionally in Brazil before getting her MFA in writing at Notre Dame. She also wrote a book I would have loved to have written about experiences I would have loved to have experienced. 

Oxenham and her boyfriend—himself a former Division I soccer player—traveled to 25 countries over three years searching for pickup soccer games. Their search took them from Caribbean beaches to Bolivian prisons, from pavement games between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem to rooftops in Tokyo, and from the slums of Nairobi to many other locations in between. They also filmed their excursions for a documentary, which I’ll later watch and review.