Soccer Education in the“ Old Days”
TIM SCHUM Founder of Change the Game Project
Len Oliver, at 81, is still active, and sporting a new hip courtesy of the Veterans Administration.(“ Getting old is not for sissies,” he noted.) After a long career with the National Endowment for the Humanities setting up state humanities councils, and later as an independent consultant, he now resides in Washington, D. C.
The ever-enthU. S. iastic Oliver is of the opinion that until Pelé joined the New York Cosmos in 1975, soccer had made scant inroads into the American sports scene. He recently shared a bit of Philadelphia soccer history that took place before the Pelé debut.
As a youngster growing up in Philadelphia with a Scottish father, Len and other largely ethnic friends learned the game by playing in the streets. When the streets were unavailable, they would sometimes adjourn to a nearby Civil War cemetery, and weave amongst the tombstones! Some of the monuments served as obstacles. A couple of others as goal posts.
Later, as a ten-year-old, Len and his twin brother, Jim, joined in more formal play through the LighthoU. S. e Boys Club, a path similar to the one taken by Walter Bahr.“ We learned by playing. Trying things out. Making our mistakes and learning from them with almost no coaching,” Oliver said.
Later, the LighthoU. S. e Boys Club core players would make up the roster at Northeast High School. Under the loose reins of Coach Ray Mullan, the Northeast squad won 96 straight matches, shutting out their opponents in 63 of the contests and winning three city titles.
“ Some years later, I was talking with some Philly guys who told me that a referee, Ralph Rosner, once told Temple University coach
Dr. Pete Leaness that if he offered scholarships to five of the Northeast players he would be guaranteed a national championship.”
Leaness, a full-time chiropodist, a part-time coach( for 40 years!) and a 2005 inductee to the NSCAA Hall of Fame, took Rosner’ s advice and offered scholarships to strikers Ed Tatoian, Jack Dunn and Bob Casey, midfielder Len Oliver and back Bob Lamey.
The story has a happy ending( for Temple, not their opponents!) as the Owls’ soccer team captured both the 1951 and 1953 intercollegiate titles.
In 1951 the Leaness men finished 9-0-1, with the only blemish being a 2-2 tie with Bill Jeffrey’ s Penn State team. In January 1952, Temple journeyed to the West Coast to face Coach GU. S. Donoghue’ s San Francisco Don team for the national intercollegiate title. In facing U. S. F, Temple was playing a team on a 42-match unbeaten streak.
“ It was an interesting game,” recounted Oliver.“ They were an almost entirely‘ international’ team while we were American kids, who, as I said, grew up learning the game on the streets or at LighthoU. S. e.”
The match attracted 10,000 fans to the city’ s Kezar Stadium. Led by its three All-American players( Dunn, Oliver and Arnold Mange, with Oliver, as a freshman, captaining the team!), Temple scored a 2-0 win to capture the title. Tatoian scored both goals in a tightly fought match.
With Dunn and Oliver still on its roster, Temple would finish unbeaten( 9-0) and earn a second national title in 1953, though this( as with many before) was a mythical title, voted on by members of the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association( ISFA).
Oliver, as an 18-year-old, would earn alternate statU. S. on the 1952 U. S. Olympic team that played in Helsinki, while a broken leg suffered while playing for the Philadelphia Uhriks in the old American Soccer League ended his dreams of making the 1956 team. He captained the U. S. Armed Forces( CISM) team in tryouts for the 1960 Olympics, but a bout with mononucleosis ended his third try for the U. S. team. He did journey to Brazil as a member of the 1963 Pan-American team. At age 30, his final national team honor came as a member of the 1964 U. S. Olympic team that was beaten out by Mexico for the right to play in the Tokyo Games of that year. It should also be mentioned that U. S. Soccer honored Oliver for his soccer playing accomplishments with his selection to its Hall of Fame in 1996.
A couple of years after the 1964 Olympics, Oliver retired from the game and went on to earn a Ph. D. in Adult / Continuing Education from the University of Chicago. He has subsequently“ given back to the game” by serving as Director of Coaching for the DC Stoddart Soccer League and as a member of the Virginia Youth Soccer Association state coaching education staff. In that capacity, over some 25 years, Oliver trained over 5,000 coaches from 91 countries in U. S. Soccer-licensed courses. In his article,“ What 5,000 Coaches Have Taught Me,” the resounding message is“ Don’ t coach! Let them play and the game will teach them.”
No matter what his coaching capacity, Len has been a disciple of the“ less is more” school of youth indoctrination to the sport.“ It worked very well for U. S. growing up. Let the ball and the game teach them.” That is the coaching philosophy he has long endorsed.
Who’ s to argue? n
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