SOCCER

They call me the Father of Brownsville soccer. It's a compliment I don't deserve, but I accept the accolade. When I was young, I rolled with the seasons: football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball throughout the spring and summer. Soccer didn't exist for me. But as I sit in a bar near La Alameda watching the derby between Cruz Azul and América in el Estadio Azteca, I realize that I have come full circle.

When I began traveling in Mexico, I often found myself sitting in a bar, staring at the television and asking myself, "What kind of game is this? There is no scoring and the games end in ties." Thus my introduction to soccer.

In my twenties I traveled regularly throughout Mexico and Central America. I attended games in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, San Salvador and San José, Costa Rica. In an under-21 World Cup game between Mexico and Scotland at Estadio Azteca in which the latter prevailed, 1-0, the fans expressed their fury by firing bottles at their players exiting the field and starting fires in the stands. I recall from stories related to me by various aficionados that after a World Cup elimination match between Honduras and El Salvador, a war erupted between the pair.

I still didn't understand the subtleties of the sport and I could never comprehend off-sides at the outset, but I began to experience the passion that no touchdown or last-second three-pointer or home run could equal the frenzied exultation of a goal.

Finding myself without a job after three years of wandering from destination to destination as a journalist, I returned to teaching in 1980 at Juan Cortina High School. I was teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and the vast majority were students from Matamoros. They were an ostracized group. They must have reminded the Brownsville Mexican-Americans of their roots who apparently didn't care to recall their humble origins. If you didn't speak English, you were an inferior being.

It was in the classroom with these sweet kids that I commenced my music career. I had two large classes for three-hour blocks. I was beginning to improve as a teacher, but there was no way I could instruct for three hours. Confronted with this challenge, I bought a guitar and learned songs, mostly Hank Williams compositions for starters. For an hour in each three-hour block we would sing. It did wonders for their pronunciation and impressed my superiors.

I was the first gringo these students had ever known. I have said repeatedly that they taught me more Spanish than I taught them English. They became the children who made me the Father of Brownsville soccer. I noticed between classes and during lunch they had found a corner of the school playground where they would play as if there were a championship at stake.

A couple of years passed as wave after wave of Matamoros boys and girls came under my tutelage. "El gabacho es buena onda" was the line that distinguished me from the rest of my colleagues. These kids sought my guidance and followed my advice. It burned me that they lived in a no-man's land with no identity. But they had carved out a physical space at the school and there they played soccer. I had to do something for them.

I had heard that in the middle of the Southmost, Brownsville's biggest barrio, there was a soccer league at Tony Gonzalez Park. I went one night. Under dim lights and an uneven field with patches of grass, two elevens sped up and down the field. These were athletes, many who crossed from Matamoros and earned a few bucks for their participation.

I inquired about the organization and the league president was lounging in the weather-beaten stands drinking beer with his buddies. He told me that a new season would begin in a month. If I wanted to enter a team, the players had to have uniforms, there was an entry fee and we had to pay half the referee's fees for each encounter.

I didn't have the money, but I went to Bobby Lackner whose family owned Lackner's Jeweler's located in the heart of downtown on Elizabeth. The business went back to the early 1900s when Bobby's grandfather first opened the store's doors. I explained to Bobby my desire to enter the Cortina kids into the league, but I didn't have the cash.

I needed enough to cover the expenses that the league president had explained to me. Bobby gave me $500. I outfitted 25 athletes and we finished third out of ten teams in a very competitive league. "If UIL ever approves soccer," I said to myself, "I want to coach the Cortina team." These were boys vying against men and they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could compete.

Lo and behold, UIL sanctioned boys soccer the following year and I was selected as head coach. During the next ten years I was involved in the program, we either won outright or tied for the district championship nine times. In 1983 I took Cortina to state. We were the first Brownsville team in the Final Four, and though we lost in the semi-final game, we had set a precedent that has resulted in various Brownsville teams winning state championships.

There were aspects of soccer that I didn't understand at the outset of my career, shortening the field my biggest drawback, but soccer was for me basketball except with more players on the pitch. It was all give-and-go. I believed the best defense was an aggressive offense. Taking a page from L.A. Lakers Magic Johnson' run-and-gun, show-time style, it was an outlet pass and to the races we went. I placed my trust and confidence in my charges and they responded.

My biggest contribution to Brownsville soccer was off the field. The football coaches hated me, the kids and the sport and did everything within their powers to undermine me as a person and to treat these Matamoros natives as second-class citizens. Unfortunately, they were enduring an 0-47 losing streak in contrast to my annual championships.

I would appear before the board and demand more money and the program's expansion. The board, realizing that soccer was an excellent investment because these kids were putting Brownsville on the Texas' athletic map, approved a J.V. program, then a junior high program and eventually a girls' program from seventh grade through varsity. In Brownsville today nobody has to apologize for being a soccer player and these kids are among the most respected students in Brownsville schools.

Before I assumed my coaching duties, I had been sports editor of The Brownsville Herald, news editor for the long-forgotten Brownsville Times, candidate for city commissioner and candidate for mayor as well as a bon vivant who frequented the hot spots in Brownsville and Matamoros and hung with a large circle of friends, but with my long hair, an earring and attired like a surfer, I was considered a flake by the establishment. It was soccer that gave me credibility in the community.

When you give from the heart, you receive ten-fold in exchange. These kids who performed with every spark of energy in their bodies elevated me in the eyes of my fellow citizens that to this very day I will be imbibing in a tavern and a patron will turn to another patron and say, "This is Jack O'Connell. You've never heard of him? He's the father of Brownsville soccer."

I don't deserve the title as many have contributed to elevating soccer in Brownsville, but those words are music to my ears.