University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, August 24, 1977
11
While American kids were playing football, basketball and baseball, Bernie Mullin was playing soccer in England. In the early 1960s he played soccer for as long as he can remember.
In grade school, he and his classmates played before school started, then during recesses and once more after school. In the summer he played all day. During his freshman year at Oxford City University, he was a backfield starter on the varsity sound.
In the spring of 1973 Mullin came to the University of Kansas from Oxford. He joined the KU soccer club and, in about two weeks, was appointed coach of the soccer team. Little did he know what he got himself into.
At that time games were played at the corner of 23rd and Iowa streets. "I remember when I first saw the field, the grass was waist high. Mullin said. 'It took us almost three weeks to mow it and once we cut all, cut we had to maintain our ourselves.'
The situation slowly improved. The soccer club bought the permanent goal posts that now stand on the field. In his first year, the team received a $350 allocation from the Student Senate.
Mulin remembers that the biggest problem the club faced in its early days was apathy from KU officials. That changed when Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, accepted an invitation to become the president of the university. People began to realize that Mulin's team was more than a group of Sunday afternoon soccer burns.
Now, the soccer team plays a schedule that includes such national powerhouses as Rockhurst and Houston. Many home games are played in Memorial Stadium, and the team travels to play at the University of Matamoras, Mexico, each spring. The 1976-77 allocation from the Student Senate was $2,000.
During Mullin's three-and-a-half years at US, the coach team has teamed with 85-14-6 record. One of the highlights of those years was winning the Big Eight championship in 1976.
This year, the team wasn't so successful. KU scored 11 goals in the Big Eight tournament and allowed only one. But that one goal, scored by Oklahoma in the last 15 seconds of a semi-final game, was enough to keep Mullin and his squad from going to the
tournament finals. The team did rebound to beat Colorado 3-6 in the consolation game to win.
Mullin remembers that the consolation game was difficult for his team. "It was hard to get psyched up after such a big let-down, but we knew that we were the best team in the tournament," he says. "We just have to go out and prove it."
Mallin is a player-coach, and the dual role sometimes presents problems. "It is difficult to remain totally objective when you're on the field," he says. "When you're out there playing you get so involved in the flow of the game that you overlook your own mistakes, which could cost your team a goal."
Mulin sees soccer as a burgeoning sport in the United States. (Indeed, no less an authority than the New York Times this summer took note, in a front page story, of the remarkable growth of soccer in this country, particularly among young people.)
Once soccer is presented to young American athletes as an equal of football and baseball, Mullin says, they will choose basketball in Dallas a Little League soccer program was introduced four summers ago and that since then soccer has taken over as the most important summer sport. Little League Mullin, says it is now dying out in Dallas.
Mullin is confident that soccer will be a similar smash at KU. Take, for example, his prediction of when soccer will arrive as a game at the University. "It's only a matter of time."
Staff Photos by ELI REICHMAN
Unlike many other sports which require only strength to be successful, soccer also requires endurance, as the players must be on the field for 30 straight minutes. (Upper left) One problem that Mutilin has encountered while coaching is trying to find a training program that matches his own strengths and weaknesses.
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