Dartmouth Soccer

Bobby Clark laughs when he remembers his first trip to the United States.

The year was 1967 and the future Dartmouth soccer coach was one of the greates goalies in the world at the time, playing for the Aberdeen Football Club in the Scottish Premier League. During that off-season, Aberdeen represented Washington, D.C., in the United States Soccer Association.

"People couldn't pronounce soccer here then, said Clark, who is in his second season as the Dartmouth coach. "They'd say 'Are you saucer players?' People don't realize how far soccer has come in this country.

Back then when we'd drive in the bus and see a soccer field we'd go crazy. 'Look, look there's a football that's what we call soccer field.' It wouldn't turn your head to see a soccer field now. Things have definitely progressed."

The progress of American soccer is an intimate concern of Clark's in his new position. He claims that his goal is to make Dartmouth the place for soccer in the Ivy League. And he plans to do it with American players.

"We have not recruited abroad/' said Clark. "We don't have to. I feel the quality of American youngsters is as good as any in the world. Harvard and Columbia have built their success to a large degree on foreign players but we plan to concentate on developing North American players.

"It's not been difficult to attract quality players to Dartmouth. The school itself has the reputation that's going to attract a certain type and it's up to Ralph (assistant coach Ferrigno) and me to build the program, not only for success but to be enjoyable, so we attract players nationwide.

"I think Americans are constantly worried they keep comparing soccer here to overseas. There's no question that American soccer players can acquit themselves well anywhere in the world."

One place where American players haven't acquitted themselves well is Dartmouth, however. The Big Green has the worst soccer record in the Ivy League since 1955 73-130-14 and has won only one league title, that shared with Brown in 1964.

Clark took over a team that had been 15-1 in the Ivies in 1984 and turned it into a respectable 3-3-1 team last season. AH three losses came by 1-0 scores, two of them to national powers Columbia and Harvard.

"Quite honestly there is one thing that has turned this program around," said soccer captain Julian Okwu 'B7, "and that is Coach Clark. He's changed our style of play. It used to be so deliberate and obvious before, now we use some imagination.

"He's also changed the whole outlook of the players here. There's a new confidence for Dartmouth .soccer we really believe in ourselves. The one thing that upsets me is that 111 have only two years under Coach Clark. I can see in a couple of years that Dartmouth will be on top of the Ivy League every year. I wish I could be part of that."

Clark's first recruiting class has already made its mark. Freshmen Fraser Levesedge and Vladica Stanojevic carried the Green to a season-opening win over Penn, 2-0.

Both are foreign-born players, but there's a catch. Levesedge, a Canadian, is a member of his country's 19-and-under national team. I wouldn t call him a foreign-born player, said Clark. "He's North American. Canada and America are the same as Scotland and England. Maybe that's just the way a Brit looks at it, but we look at Canadians and American in the same light."

Stanojevic, called Vladdy, is Yugoslavian by birth but Americanized by high school. He set Vermont records for goals scored in a season (44) in 1983 while an exchange student at Oxbow High School in Bradford, about 25 miles north of Dartmouth. Stanojevic returned to Yugoslavia to fulfill his two-year military obligation and then returned to Vermont to live with Oxbow Athletic Director Bobby Claflin.

"I applied to Dartmouth right away," said Stanojevic. "Living in Bradford, I had had a chance to visit Dartmouth and it fascinated me the first time I came here. The education is special but to be honest, soccer is the reason I came, that and the coach. When you have a coach like Bobby Clark, you really look forward to playing. He's an excellent coach and very well known in Europe. Of course I had heard of him before I came here."

It's small wonder. Clark, 41, had a spectacular 20-year career in professional soccer, both in this country and Scotland. He played 17 years for Aberdeen and was the starting goalie for Scotland in 47 World Cup matches.

On this side of the Atlantic he played one year for the Washington entry in the USSA and one year for the San Antonio Whips in the North American Soccer League.

"I think the NASL had a miraculous rise to power," said Clark, "and it got a lot of people playing soccer here in the mid-seventies. Kids found out that soccer was a fun game to play not easy but fun."

After retiring from soccer in 1982, Clark turned to coaching, something that he had been doing at soccer camps in the U.S. for years.

His first job was with a professional team in Zimbabwe. "I loved Zimbabwe," said Clark. "The only problem was political between the two tribes of the country there was a guerrilla war. I feel that the two boom areas for soccer are North America and Africa. It was very enjoyable there and I was tempted to stay. It was a great experience for my family but after a year I wasn't prepared to take a gamble for them."

Instead, Clark came to the states where he became an assistant at Boston College. When the Dartmouth job opened up, he was right in line to apply.

"Before I applied, I knew Dartmouth as a college more for its academics, as one of the Ivy League," said Clark. "I was delighted after a year in the job. I love it. This is one of the best parts of the world to bring up a family, and I feel Dartmouth athletics is hungry for success. And a Scotsman always likes a challenge.

"Time will tell what our record will be this year, but if we can continue the effort put in last year the effort was phenome nal from the lads on the JV to the seniors that the same commitment will take us another rung.

"Make no mistake, we have a tough schedule and if we win the Ivies, we'll be among the top ten in the nation. We're talking about the soccer elite in the country and that's the aim. I know there's a job to be done and I'm going to do it."

Bobby Clark, in his second season as men'ssoccer coach, was recognized as one of theworld's greatest goalies when he played forthe Aberdeen Football Club in the ScottishPremier League.