60 For 60: Week 7
The countdown has begun! Less than 2 weeks remain before Staples soccer’s 60th anniversary celebration (Saturday, October 13: 1 p.m. tailgate, 2 p.m. game vs. Darien, 4 p.m. alumni pickup game, 6:30 p.m. party). Each day, a new fun fact is posted on social media. Here are last week’s entries:
— For the first 12 years of Staples soccer, games were played in 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. The change to 40-minute halves came in 1971.
— Albie Loeffler and Jim Kuhlmann started Woodbrook, perhaps the first sleepaway soccer camp in the US. Kuhlmann and Jim Kaufman ’62 bought it, renamed it the Soccer Farm, and grew many generations of players at the Pomfret School in upstate Connecticut.
— 1992 was the first time Staples played 5 state tournament games. They reached the finals of the enlarged (from 16) 32-team event, but lost 3-0 to Simsbury. The next year, the Wreckers won it all — again in 5 games.
— Staples soccer’s 1st college player was Bill Needham, from the original 1958 team. He was the first of many former Wreckeres to play at Wesleyan University.
— The 1978 banquet was legendary. Cosmos star Santiago Formosa told players not to go to college, but instead concentrate on soccer. Co-captain Gordon Hull gave a speech in Portuguese. Co-captain Tommy Greenwald’s father walked in late wearing a kilt, following his bagpipe lesson.
— An early Staples soccer banquet featured guest speaker Pete Gogolak, the soccer-style kicker for the New York Giants.
— The first teams sat on benches where they do now. They then moved to the base of The Hill, but in 1988 moved back to the far side, when the FCIAC mandated that teams side on opposite sides from fans. Players welcomed the move, saying that area had previously been a quiet “dead zone.”
Want to see a different “60 For 60” fact every day? Follow us on social media: Twitter (StaplesSoccer1) and Facebook (Staples Soccer).
Coach Albie Loeffler with his players at halftime, at the base of The Hill.
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