After 46 years, men's soccer gets a foot in the varsity door

But far away from the media glare, the game of soccer was beginning to penetrate American lives. On Oct. 17, 1953, The Michigan Daily described soccer as a "rugged sport with an international flavor that is rapidly climbing on the Michigan sports horizon."

At that same time, the paper predicted that the Wolverine Soccer Club - as the Michigan men's soccer team was known - was on the verge of gaining varsity status.

The Wolverines remained on that verge through 46 years and two national championships. Now, the team finally has what it has so long sought.

"We're all out there playing because we like to play now," club president Ryan Yoder said. "The game isn't going to change any. We're still going to play every day and have fun doing it.

"It's just now there are new opportunities that we haven't ever experienced before, like good travel arrangements ... no more driving team buses and vans. It's those things that everyone is excited about. It's been 50 years in the coming. Fifty years and we're finally going to get the little perks that we've been wanting."

But those 50 years weren't wasted. The Michigan men's soccer team has had a rich and complicated history that began after World War II and is still unfolding today.

Throughout the years, the team has been composed of foreign students, former football players and Americans who just love the game.

From Football to "Football"

Though in this country it has only begun to emerge as a national pastime in recent years, soccer has long been popular on the international scene, uniting fans from around the globe.

This team's roots are also deeply intertwined with that "foreign" game. In the late 1940s, the University's International Center sponsored an intramural soccer league that played games twice a week.

Each country formed its own team, and each fall there were approximately nine countries represented. But not everyone had a country for which to play.

As a result, the club was officially founded in 1948. In those early years, the program received no funding from the University.

"Those of us that were left over formed our own team," said Len Harding, who was one of the only Americans on the team in 1957. "It was very informal and for a while we had only four or five guys.

"We really enjoyed the game and we got some fans - especially girlfriends - who came out and watched. It was a lot of fun and we didn't lose."

Due to the lack of support, the players often wore jerseys borrowed from the football team and supplied their own socks and pads.

"Soccer was never a sport in this country," Harding said. "It's a world-class sport that never really caught on here. If you played baseball, you taught your son to play baseball and he taught his son. It was a pretty rough-and-tumble game because the players weren't skilled."

Harding said many teams the Wolverines faced in those early years were composed from a thin population of qualified athletes.

"The players I played against weren't coached," Harding said. "They were what was left over from the football team. They played with football cleats too, which hurt when you were kicked,"

The team flourished in the 1950s, winning a lot more than it lost.

Throughout the '60s, soccer at Michigan continued in pretty much the same way, as a loosely organized team that played just for fun.

But in the early years of the decade, an interesting trend began.

Extending their careers

Players who had played in major collegiate programs as undergrads, especially in the East, came to Michigan and saw the club team as a way to continue playing as graduate students.

"The team played a lot of ethnic teams around Detroit," said Mike Malley, a former Wolverine from England. "It was very much an ethnic game in those days. Everybody playing was born and raised in foreign countries like Germany, England, India and Brazil.

"Every country had its own style and it was hard to make everyone agree. But the foreigners had a passion for the game because there was national pride on the line."

Undoubtedly, the '70s were a time of transition throughout much of the world. The same was true for the Wolverines. In the early '70s, when Steve Olson was a player, there were two teams, one for graduate students, and the other for undergrads.

Those former collegiate stars who had once consented to playing with the undergrads had split off and formed their own team.

"When I first started, the graduate club was the stronger club and it regularly kicked our asses," said Olson, a veteran referee who called the first championship game of Major League Soccer. "It was composed of foreigners and varsity athletes from other colleges who still wanted to play. In fact, in '74-75, our team had only two foreigners."

Olson took over as coach in 1978, the team became more successful, and went 18-2 in 1980, his final year.

In the '70s, the club remained on its own to fund itself and find places to play. The players didn't even have proper uniforms. Their jerseys shrank by 25 percent the first time they were washed.

"It was hard to go and beat varsity teams and not have the same respect and treatment here," Olson said. "But on the road you'd go places and people would come out and watch because they thought we were Michigan's varsity team."

Olson recalled a game against Indiana-Purdue at a stadium in Fort Wayne when the stands were filled because it was Girl Scout Night.

"All the little girls thought that we were U of M varsity athletes," Olson said. "Our guys were signing autographs, but were pretty embarrassed because they weren't used to the recognition. People were flabbergasted that we weren't a varsity program."

Kickoff

Soccer's popularity in the United States really began to grow in the late '70s when the North American Soccer League, the now defunct professional soccer league, planted its seed in the suburbs, where the game really took off.

"So many changes have happened to the sporting landscape where in the '70s soccer was a part of the subculture and now it's a major demographic."

As the game was developing on a national level, it was also developing on the collegiate level. During Burns' time as a player, the National Collegiate Soccer Association was formed in 1988.

The formal organization of club soccer made it more difficult for Michigan to compete against varsity teams.

Regardless, in the past five years, the Wolverines have achieved the most success they have ever known.

The past three years, they have competed in the championship game of the national club tournament and are currently the defending back-to-back national champions.

Even the University's Athletic Department has taken notice.

"All of us who are involved with the sport recognize the contributions that these young men have made," Michigan associate Athletic Director Mike Stevenson said. "They're excellent scholar athletes who have brought a lot of pride to the program."

A struggle for status

Though it has had a successful and colorful history, the team that began as the Wolverine soccer club will have a new title for the new millennium. In the fall of 2000, it will be a fully supported child of the Athletic Department.

The telling of the program's colorful history, though, would not be complete without a brief note about the program's fight for varsity status.

Club teams are responsible for doing everything themselves. They must fund their own travels, and pay for their own referees, uniforms and expenses.

As a result, the coach and the team are not free to merely play the game. They must also concentrate on the piddly details that are taken for granted by varsity programs.

From the beginning, the Michigan men's soccer team has sought help from the Athletic Department, though in the early days there wasn't much talk of varsity status except from speculative media.

But truth be told, the athletes didn't get much support.

"Every fall we had guys who would march down to see (former Athletic Director) Fritz Crisler," Harding said. "But he was not about to have a soccer team. We met with him every year, but we never got anywhere nor did we expect to."

Though daunted, the team wasn't discouraged. But it wasn't until the late '70s that the team started presenting serious proposals to the Athletic Department.

During Olson's tenure as coach the team's application for varsity status actually passed through the Board in Control of Intercollegiate Athletics. Because of a lack of funding, the measure failed.

Malley, who founded the World Cup Committee in Detroit, helped the team write numerous proposals to the board, including a 37-page work in 1997.

Finally this year, the idea caught on.

"It's always only been a matter of resources," Stevenson said. "There's been an awareness that it's a tremendous sport that deserves recognition. It was just a matter of timing."

For many of the current players, the responsibility rests with them to carry the club tradition out on the highest note possible.

Because of Michigan's contract with Nike, the Michigan men's soccer team may not be able to practice in their favorite warmups in the new millenium. But that's OK, because that means the team has achieved varsity status.

04-19-99