Moe: Giving a kick start to soccer
YOU COULD say this all started because a Madison man named Jack Heiden had a young son named Eric who liked to ice skate.
In the 1960s, Jack Heiden ran a youth hockey program in Madison, and he read an article about how in Russia, hockey players kept fit in the summer by playing soccer.
Heiden got in touch with a nascent Madison soccer club, one of the club's founding members, Keith Binns, was recalling Monday. The result was that in 1966 a group of about 40 young hockey players showed up at Franklin Field, where Binns and his buddies began teaching them soccer. Before too long other kids in the south side Franklin neighborhood asked to join in.
Eventually the Madison Youth Soccer Association was established, and you could say things have progressed pretty well. Today, four decades on, some 15,000 kids are playing soccer in the Madison area.
It's the kind of success story that deserves being preserved, and now, happily, it will be. Binns, a lively 75 and still playing the game he's loved for a lifetime, has published a book, "Alive & Kicking: America's Love Affair with Soccer," that is part autobiography, part travelogue and fully infused with Binns' humor, vitality and passion for soccer.
For a while after Binns, a native of Leeds, England, came to Madison, it looked like that passion might be unrequited. He tells the story early in his book.
Arriving in Madison in the summer of 1955 -- he has a sister who'd landed here earlier and touted the city's virtues -- Binns found his way into one of the city's few sporting goods stores, Badger Sports on State Street. Binns doesn't know whom he talked to there, but from what he tells me of the conversation, I'd guess it was either Johnny Kotz or John Roach Sr.
Binns: "I would like to buy a soccer ball."
Man behind Badger Sports counter: "A soccer ball? You must be joking. I don't even know what a soccer ball looks like."
This was not what a 22-year-old immigrant from England -- "where my life had practically revolved around soccer" -- had hoped to hear.
Binns had been introduced to the game by his father in 1943. Keith was 11, and father and son made their way by streetcar from their village of Crossgates to watch the local professional team, Leeds United.
Reading about his experience reminded me of the first time my own dad took me to a Badger football game at Camp Randall.
"The match began," Binns writes, "and I was enthralled." His enthusiasm only increased when Leeds scored and young Keith was literally lifted off his feet by the surging crowd. In the streetcar going home, Keith told his dad that when he grew up he wanted to be a professional soccer player.
"Aye," his dad said. "Everybody does."
A decade later, at Badger Sports in Madison, Binns was no longer thinking of playing professionally. He just wanted to buy a soccer ball. "I thought the players just kicked each other," the counter man said.
Binns eventually wrote a letter to a national soccer organization, inquiring about teams or leagues in the Madison area. That led to his joining the Milwaukee Bavarians, which in turn led to his meeting another Madison player in the league, Peter Bostanescu. In 1956, they took out an advertisement in both Madison daily papers, soliciting other soccer enthusiasts. They received five replies. But each of the those had at least one other soccer nut friend, so there were enough bodies -- barely -- to form what became the Madison 56ers.
With the help of other pioneers like Bill Reddan, more teams and leagues emerged in Madison. Binns took teams of locals to play in England and Jamaica. And while Binns didn't realize his childhood dream of playing professionally -- his day job was with local steel wholesaler Wiedenbeck -- his lifelong immersion in the game brought far richer rewards.
His book, then, is in part a thank you, a love letter to the game that has been such a large part of his life. You can get more information about the book at Binns' Web site and it is also available at local soccer facilities and retailers, where, it should be noted, you may also purchase a soccer ball.
Heard something Moe should know? Call 252-6446, write PO Box 8060, Madison, WI 53708, or e-mail dmoe@madison.com
