When the University of Miami women’s soccer team, led by Coach Sarah Barnes, takes the Cobb Stadium field against North Carolina State on October 14, some of the loudest cheers will come from the alumni of the men’s soccer team, which last played an intercollegiate game in 1984.
In the decades since, several of the team’s alumni have been loyal donors to the women’s program. They have also gathered on campus regularly to reminisce about their days as Division I student-athletes and reconnect with their alma mater. Plans for the upcoming 2023 reunion include a morning scrimmage at Cobb Stadium and a lunchtime gathering before returning to Cobb Stadium in the evening to cheer on the Hurricane women.
Two men’s soccer alumni, Ronald Macklin, B.B.A. ’83, and Dan Vered-Rosenfeld, B.S. ’69, share their memories ahead of this year’s reunion.
Not many people realize that there was a men’s soccer program at the U – tell us a bit about it.
The University had a men’s soccer program from 1961 to 1984. For 23 years, Miami Hurricane student athletes from all corners of the world walked onto Greentree Field behind the Hecht Athletic Building to practice for three hours a day and compete in a ten- to fifteen-game schedule. And getting the program started in the first place was, to say the least, a difficult task.
Tell us about those early challenges.
The biggest challenge in the beginning was finding a coach who knew the rules, positions, and strategies of the sport, which although named soccer in the U.S., is called football worldwide. The short answer was the UM tennis team! It turns out the men’s tennis team had a very successful coach in Dale Lewis and after some coaxing, he agreed to be the coach of the men’s soccer team. Tryouts in hot and humid August brought out some players who knew little about the sport but wanted to participate in athletics at the collegiate level.
Luckily, some international students came out to the field and were quickly incorporated into the squad. Coach Lewis also asked some of his tennis team’s student athletes to round up the numbers of his adopted squad. Some names inducted into the UM Hall of Fame (for tennis) were part of his soccer teams.
The international players taught their teammates about positions, ball control, movement into space without the ball (a concept basketball players understood), and the offside rule. The last one hockey fans might have understood if that sport had had any fans in Florida back in the sixties!
How was the experience of playing soccer for the U in the early years?
As IBIS yearbooks and Miami Hurricane newspaper articles from those years will attest, the quality of the play was not always stellar. The effort was present but without any scholarships or soccer budgets to speak of, we played for the love of the game. Road trips were in vans – all the way up to North Carolina!
To cut down on the expense of a hotel room the night before an away game, the team would show up at the opponent’s campus a few hours before the game. They unfolded their cramped legs from the fourteen-hour van ride and got on the pitch to represent the University of Miami in the best way they could.
The experience, as the saying goes, “built character,” but didn’t reflect well on the team’s won-loss records. That said, speaking to our fellow alumni soccer players today, fifty years later, they will all tell you those were some of the best times of their lives.
What were some of the team’s most memorable experiences?
One alumnus, Brian Killeen, B.F.A. ’78, played out his four years for the Hurricanes and then went on to play for the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL). His career was cut short by an injury, and he returned to UM for his graduate studies. It was then that he was asked to coach men’s soccer at the U.
Brian worked his connections to get the local NASL team, the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers, to practice at Mark Light Field. Not too many NASL teams played on astroturf, and the Strikers wanted to practice there for their upcoming games with the New York Cosmos.
So, in 1979 and then again in 1980, the UM teams played against World Cup players like Gerd Muller, Teofilo Cubillas, Francisco Marinho, and others. Talk about memories! The alumni who played in those games will bend your ear ad nauseum if you let them get started telling you about the time they went up against Marinho, the star of Brazil’s 1974 World Cup team.
Those games against the Strikers raised funds for the soccer program. The U’s legendary baseball coach, Ron Fraser, also helped the student-athletes raise money when he allowed them to work the Mark Light baseball stadium parking lot on some night games. The parking proceeds went to the soccer program’s budget, paying for uniforms and away game expenses.
How did soccer evolve at the University?
The men’s team stopped competing in 1984 when the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics had to make some difficult decisions about which male athletic programs to eliminate to comply with Title IX.
It wasn’t until 1998 that the University established the women’s soccer program. The Greentree Field, renamed Cobb Stadium, was refurbished with new grass, stands for 500-plus fans, a giant scoreboard, and an entrance gate for an awesome gameday atmosphere.
In 2018, at the invitation of Coach Barnes, the men’s soccer alumni stepped on to the old—now revamped—pitch on which some of them last played when they were 18 years old. On a tour of the athletics facilities, quite a few jaws dropped at the contrast to the facilities of the seventies!
If you haven’t been to any of the Hurricane women’s soccer games yet, you should! The quality of play is excellent, and our Hurricanes need fan support in the stands.
How can alumni learn more about and stay in touch with your group?
Visit the UM Men’s Soccer 1961-1984 Alumni Facebook page and read more about these student-athletes who represented the U with all they had.
And come out to our seventh reunion on October 14! These gentlemen, now aged 60-plus (but who’s counting?) will play a game at Cobb Stadium at 9 a.m. before regrouping to cheer on the women’s team at 6 p.m. that evening. We look forward to seeing you there!
