Irvine has been named the fifth best place in the country for soccer moms (and dads), which shouldn't surprise anyone who has had a kid on a club team from elsewhere in Orange County. Seems like they were always playing games in Irvine or against a team from there. A couple other OC cities cracked the Top 20 in the NerdWallet rankings; can you guess which ones?
]
They are Anaheim at No. 13, followed by Santa Ana at No. 14. Wherefore art thou Mission Viejo? Not on this list.
NerdWallet, a financial site that crunches numbers to routinely come up with lists like these, measured each city's median income against the level of soccer competition, total number of youth clubs per capita and costs for gasoline, car insurance premiums for a Ford Escape and sideline snacks such as bananas and orange juice. (Shouldn't that be orange slices? Just sayin' …)
Using this formula, Tacoma, Washington, emerged as the top city in the country for soccer moms and dads. Irvine is sandwiched between Worcester, MA, at No. 4 and Ontario, CA, at No. 6. Tag-teaming Anaheim and Santa Ana are Seattle, WA, at No. 12 and Vancouver, WA, at No. 15. San Bernardino and Riverside finished 17 and 18 respectively.
I do believe one very important criteria is missing: Which city has soccer parents who are most enthusiastic about waking up at 6:30 a.m. on Saturdays to put up the nets?
A NerdWallet chart that accompanied the rankings follows on the next page …
[
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.