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GREENSBORO -- It might have all started with an act of defiance, a brazen decision by a woman who would not be deterred.

Barbara Blum was laid to rest Wednesday after a long and active life that will continue to resonate in this city and in towns across North Carolina. The chain-smoking gal from Los Angeles was Greensboro's matron saint of soccer.

The sport is still in its infancy in America, a result of its foreign roots and the implacable nature of those who believed they once held some rule over athletics. Soccer wasn't bequeathed to us in sepia-toned dreams like our other sports. It was forced upon by Blum and others like her.

She was told soccer would never work here, so she worked harder. She was told no one knew how the game was played, so she taught it. And even after the hard work, the endless volunteer hours, the organizing of teams and leagues and officials, Blum was told she and her band of rebels could not play on our hallowed fields.

So she climbed the fence.

The details are sketchy, but the story apparently is true. Blum and a handful of others had managed to gain a foothold in Greensboro by the mid-1970s, organizing some leagues and convincing players and officials that soccer had a future in America in general and in Greensboro in particular. The city leaders here weren't convinced.

In 1976, a traveling exhibition called the Bicentennial Soccer Tournament came to North Carolina, among other cities across the country, and games were scheduled against players from other countries. The cities chosen included Greensboro. The problem was, Blum had been told by city and school officials that under no circumstances could the teams practice on the sacred grounds of Jamieson Stadium.

The night before the game, under the cover of darkness, she assembled the players outside the stadium's fence. Standing before the chain-link barrier between soccer and Greensboro, she took a drag off her cigarette, threw it on the ground and started to climb.

Today more than 70,000 kids play soccer in North Carolina, and Greensboro is known nationally as one of a handful of soccer capitals with world-class facilities, organizations and players.

"There was a regal quality to her," Bob Kepner, a fellow state soccer pioneer and past president of the N.C. Youth Soccer Association, said Wednesday. "But she was tough."

Blum was one of the founders of Greensboro Youth Soccer, a contribution to this city that can't be measured in numbers. Thousands of kids and coaches have come through the program, gone on to teach the game and its values to the generations to follow and continue still to spread the game to those who would choose not to understand it.

"All the kids of North Carolina who play soccer, and the adults, too, owe Barbara Blum a debt of gratitude," Kepner said.

She was simply not to be deterred, he said.

"She was a force to be reckoned with," Rabbi Fred Guttman said at Blum's service Wednesday at Temple Emanuel.

They tell stories about her still, stories about how she and Carl Fenske and others would go from field to field in the early days to make sure there were officials to call the games, how they would carry hammers and nails to repair wooden goals Fenske had built himself, how they worked to provide uniforms and equipment to the few curious kids who started soccer in this city all by themselves when everyone told them it would never work.

They tell of the battles with city leaders and school board officials who refused to give the fledgling sport any respect, grudgingly giving up ground by the inch to Blum and those who would not be kept out by rules or traditions or chain-link fences.

Blum was a leader, they said Wednesday, a woman of valor who was never late and did not tolerate those who would be late. People actually arrived at the service apologizing for not being there sooner.

She was 81 years old, a Life Master in competitive bridge, a mother and a friend to many in Greensboro and in the cities she lived before she came here in the 1970s shocked to find an entire city without soccer.

The history of soccer in Greensboro began the day she arrived. Barbara Blum died last week after a long and active life, and she was laid to rest Wednesday by family and friends and those who loved her. She was one of our pioneers. One of our leaders. She was our matron saint of soccer.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com