Blue White Illustrated

ith enthusiasm for soccer contin- uing to grow steadily throughout the United States, it's time to properly recognize in a highly visible way and fully appreciate the historical tradition of the sport at Penn State, one of the great college programs of the first half of the 20th century. It's doubtful that many people passing Jeffrey Field at the corner of University Drive and Park Avenue –just a few hun- dred yards west of Beaver Stadium – know anything about the man whose name adorns the home playing site for Penn State's men and women's soccer teams. Until Bob Warming became the coach of Penn State's men's team in 2010, even he knew little about Bill Jeffrey. As Warming told me a few months after his hiring, "I'm a soccer junkie, and I've been in the busi- ness for 32 years as a head coach and before that as a player, and I know there've been a number of tremen- dous coaches and great players who have come through here. But prior to 1978, I don't know a whole lot about Penn State and Bill Jeffrey." What Warming did know was that Jeffrey was the head coach of the 1950 U.S. team that shocked the international soccer world by winning the World Cup with a 1-0 victory over England in what remains one of the biggest upsets in sports histo- ry. Warming also knew that one of Jef- frey's successors as head coach of the Nittany Lions, Walter Bahr, was a player on that 1950 team. What Warming didn't realize is that Jeffrey won more collegiate national championships than any other coach – nine – or that Jeffrey's immediate suc- cessor, Ken Hosterman, won another two to give Penn State a collegiate- record 11 national titles. In fact, the surviving players on Hosterman's two national championship teams in 1954 and '55 will be having their 60th reunion the weekend of Sept. 5-7, in conjunction with the Temple men's game and the football team's home opener against Akron. Only one of those returning players, Don Shick, was on Jeffrey's last team in 1952, said Dick Packer who is the princi- pal organizer of the reunion. Packer, a first-team All-American in both cham- pionship seasons and an Olympian in 1956, was a freshman practicing under Jeffrey's watchful eye. "I was very lucky to have been recruit- ed and coached by Bill Jeffrey, if only for one season," Packer told me recently V A R S I T Y V I E W S Saluting PSU soccer's forgotten man W HANDS FULL Jeffrey built Penn State into a soccer power- house, winning 74.2 percent of his games in 37 years as coach. Photo courtesy of Penn State Athletic Com- munications

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