American Soccer History Symposium – Dr Kevin Tallec Marston speaks on first US football President, Gus Randolph Manning

Here we look back at the contribution by Dr Kevin Tallec Marston, Research Fellow & Academic Project Manager at CIES, who was an invited speaker on the first day at the American Soccer History Symposium and Annual Business Meeting at the Hall of Fame in October 2018.

Halls of Fame are commonplace in United States sports. The US National Soccer Hall of Fame is reopening at FC Dallas’ Stadium in Frisco, TX. Alongside the Hall of Fame induction event was the American Soccer History Symposium attended by Dr Kevin Tallec Marston who gave a paper recounting the biography of Gus Randolph Manning, who was the first President of the US Football Association in 1913. The conference, organized by the Society for American Soccer History (SASH), included a number of papers split across two eras of “soccer” football history in the USA including Brian Bunk (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) who spoke about soccer during the First World War. This was followed by an inside account of the FIFA World Cup in 1930 by Zach Bigalke (University of Oregon) and grandson of one of the 1930 US players, James Brown (public historian).

After the break, papers were given by Steve Holroyd (public historian) on the first North American Soccer League (NASL) college drafts, George Kioussis (California State University, Northridge) who delved into Phil Woosnam’s “reformist impulses” in the 1960s, David Kilpatrick (Mercy College, NY) who offered a critical look at the evolution of pedagogy and coaching texts in the 1970s and 1980s and, finally, Patrick Salkeld (University of Central Oklahoma) who reflected on the US Women’s 1999 World Cup team.

The remainder of the day was given over to a fascinating round table with some living legends from the old North American Soccer League (Dick Cecil, Derek Liecty and Clive Toye) and closed with a film screening of the soon-to-be released documentary by Tom McCabe (Rutgers University) on the trio of US players who were all from the same town in Kearney, NJ, and who played in two successive men’s World Cups. The second day included another roundtable with the leadership of the National Soccer Hall of Fame who discussed the new Hall, how they included facial recognition technology into a sports museum for the first time ever, and the future of the new Hall. The last conference session was a chaired discussion with former director of the old Hall of Fame, Jack Huckel, and longtime US Soccer Federation official historian, Roger Allaway. Finally, the event closed with a Society for American Soccer History annual meeting.