American Soccer Didn't Start with Pele: Part 2 of 7 - Youth Soccer with the Lighthouse Boys Club

Youth Soccer with the Lighthouse Boys Club

The Lighthouse Experience

Lighthouse was founded in 1897 by Mrs. Robert Bradford, a Philadelphia socialite. This was a time when Jane Addams and other social reformers were establishing their settlement houses and neighborhood centers to help the wave of European immigrants and their youngsters cope with urban life. Lighthouse capitalized on its Scottish, Irish, and English neighbors’ passion for soccer and early on created a soccer foothold in the Kensington community. Most boys started with the Club at 9-10 years of age, often staying with the Lighthouse teams until they were ready for play in Philadelphia’s top First Division or the pros. For years Lighthouse had provided the senior amateur teams and the pros with top class, home-grown American talent. For example, the 1936 Olympic Soccer Team had four former Lighthouse players in its ranks, a tradition that went back to the 1912 Olympics.

Lighthouse offered us age divisions, a club for practices, a large field complex, and retired English and Scottish players to coach “the lads.” My first coach, Ozzie Lynn, a wrinkled, stolid Englishman who could still drive a ball 60 yards, appeared every Saturday morning, rain or shine, in the same old, patched green sweater to put us on the field. By this time, we had mastered the basic techniques from our years of intense street soccer, so Ozzie’s task was to instruct us: “Don’t hold on to the ball,” “Get it up the field,” or “Put it in the net.” We did this with regularity, often ignoring his exhortations to play “the English game.”

Coach Ozzie told us where to play, still in the traditional 2-3-5, and we did it. We changed in a one-room, timbered clubhouse with no showers or heat, often shivering until we moved onto the field and started running. We always walked the three miles to the field, arriving ready to play without warmup or stretching, and walking home afterwards, our boots over our shoulders. Raw, tough, hard soccer where we honed our skills, applying what we had learned in the streets to real, full-sided games. We now started to learn positions, heading (seldom done in street soccer), and gaining a tactical sense of the game.

We were low-income kids, so our equipment consisted of the hand-me-down high top Mansfields or Hotspurs--the only shoes available, colored sweatshirts for uniforms, and usually Popular Mechanics or some other pulp magazine for shin guards. They made good reading at half time. The Club supplied one ball per game and an older player to referee. We came with a love of the game and good technique and skills, but we had to learn to play on the larger field with a full team
But the street soccer moves paid off.

What We Learned About the Game

Just a few years later we were playing against some of the best players in the country, and I made it to the U.S. Olympic Team final tryouts in St Louis in 1952 at the age of 18. When I think of our years in the streets, unsupervised, I wonder if we would have been better players with trained coaches, as many youngsters, both boys and girls, have today? Probably. Would we have faced the twin dangers of being overcoached while being discouraged from taking risks and working on new moves on the field? Possibly. Did we gain an appreciation for the game, confidence in our skills, and a competitive drive that would last a lifetime? Absolutely.

---

Part 1 - “Street Soccer” Memories
Part 2 - Youth Soccer with the Lighthouse Boys Club
Part 3 - Philadelphia Junior Soccer in the 1940's
Part 4 - Playing With the Big Guys: Amateur Soccer in the Early 1950's
Part 5 - High School and College Soccer--Products of the Clubs
Part 6 - The Pro Game in the Early 50's
Part 7 - In Retrospect