Before the Pros: How Amateurs Built American Soccer
Before professional soccer had a foothold in the United States, the game belonged to college students, mill workers, parish teams and immigrant clubs. Professional leagues came late and, at first, didn't last. Amateurs built the game here, and if you follow USL League Two, the WPSL, the NPSL, the UPSL or a local amateur side, you're watching the part of American soccer that never went away.
Here's how it started.
Before "soccer" meant soccer
U.S. Soccer's official timeline says schools and colleges in the early 1800s played many local versions of "football."
The Midwest has an early claim. U.S. Soccer's timeline dates the first game in the U.S. played under London FA rules to Oct. 11, 1866, in Waukesha, Wis., with Carroll College students facing local residents. A Waukesha Freeman report from the time confirms the game happened, though it doesn't say what rules were used. That part rests on historians' reading of the evidence.
The most famous early game is Rutgers 6, Princeton 4, on Nov. 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, N.J., played 25 a side with no carrying or throwing. It was a kicking game, but whose rules it followed is disputed. Princeton's museum calls the Rutgers code a modified version of the London Football Association's rules. The Society for American Soccer History (SASH) says it looked more like England's older Sheffield rules, and that Princeton's rules for the Nov. 13 rematch came from the FA's 1863 laws. American football claims that day. U.S. Soccer's timeline instead claims that rematch as the first intercollegiate soccer game.
Whatever the colleges played, they didn't stay with it. According to U.S. Soccer, most football-playing colleges switched to rugby-style rules in 1876, the path that led to American football.
The mill team and the parish team
Soccer survived because working communities kept it. In the Newark-Kearny area, the Scottish-owned Clark Thread Co. employed many Scottish immigrants, and in November 1883 its workers formed a team called ONT, for "Our New Thread." The next summer, the American Football Association was founded in Newark at the Clark Thread firehouse, adopting English FA rules. ONT won the association's first American Cup in 1885. Accounts differ on that final's score, date and venue, but not the winner.
Similar scenes played out in Fall River, Mass., in Paterson, N.J., in Philadelphia and in St. Louis. St. Louis did it its own way. According to researcher David Litterer, whose histories are hosted by SASH, many of St. Louis's top clubs were tied to churches and parishes, especially Catholic ones, rather than to the ethnic social clubs common elsewhere. U.S. Soccer credits a St. Louis body, the Western Football Association of 1883, as the first soccer league in America, while Litterer's St. Louis history records organized soccer there from 1881. "First" is a contested word in this history, and it's best held loosely.
The pros arrive, and leave
Professional soccer showed up in 1894, when National League baseball owners started the American League of Professional Football. It lost money and played its last games on Oct. 20 that year, after only a few weeks. (SASH also documents a rival professional circuit centered in Philadelphia that same year, another reason "first" needs care.) The National Association Foot Ball League, based in New Jersey and described by U.S. Soccer as the nation's leading league, started the next spring and filled the gap. The original American Soccer League, a bigger professional circuit built largely from it and a southern New England league, didn't start until 1921.
Amateurs build the governing body
The national structure came from amateurs as well. A newer American Amateur Football Association challenged the older American Football Association for recognition, and in 1912 both applied to FIFA. The amateur side led the founding of the United States Football Association on April 5, 1913, in New York, the body that became today's U.S. Soccer Federation. FIFA granted it provisional membership in 1913 and full membership in 1914. According to Litterer, its first general secretary was Thomas W. Cahill, a longtime St. Louis organizer.
The new federation also created a national championship. According to Litterer's 1913 season history, the National Challenge Cup was open to "all clubs, both professional and amateur."
The first final was played on May 16, 1914, in Pawtucket, R.I., where Brooklyn Field Club beat Brooklyn Celtic 2-1. TheCup.us, a fan-run site devoted to the tournament, puts the crowd at about 10,000. The same competition is today's Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
The Midwest was there from the beginning. Pullman FC of Chicago reached the quarterfinals of that first tournament, beating Hyde Park Blues in a Chicago derby before losing to Niagara Falls Rangers, according to TheCup.us.
St. Louis and the Midwest
St. Louis soon proved that homegrown teams could win it all. In 1920, Ben Millers of St. Louis became the first Challenge Cup champion from west of the Alleghenies, according to U.S. Soccer. Litterer writes that the side was made up entirely of St. Louis-based players. By his count, six different St. Louis teams won the cup between 1920 and 1957.
Even in St. Louis, clubs weren't always secure. Litterer notes that later company teams were often dropped when results or profits slipped.
The city's soccer roots ran deep. By Litterer's count, five of the 11 U.S. starters who beat England at the 1950 World Cup came from St. Louis.
Kansas City shows up in the record only faintly so far. Litterer's 1913 season summary lists a "Kansas City League" for 1912-13, with Fort Leavenworth as champion. That's one line on one archive page. It hints that organized soccer was being played in this region before World War I, and we'd like to know more. If you know of records, clippings or family stories about early soccer around Kansas City, we want to hear from you at contact@llrmedia.com.
The same tradition, still going
The amateur tradition continues today, and it isn't only a men's story. The Women's Premier Soccer League, founded in 1998, is sanctioned by the U.S. Adult Soccer Association, according to the league. That association, founded in 1982, is the national body for adult amateur soccer. Its own site says it counts 54 state associations and more than 220,000 players.
So when a Midwest amateur club takes the field, or a League Two or WPSL side fills its roster with local players, they aren't on the edge of American soccer history. They are its oldest, steadiest part. For most of the game's first century, the pros came and went. The amateurs kept it going.
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