News

Beadling Club Hits 100
Roots are in Pittsburgh's Mining Community
Reprinted with permission from Soccer America, March 29, 1999, VOL. 54, No.11 1(800) 997-6223

The year was 1898. The U S warship Maine blew up in Havana harbor, igniting the Spanish-American War. Brooklyn and three other boroughs united with Manhattan to form New York City.And in Pittsburgh. Pa., where steel and coal operations were thriving, the Beadling Soccer Club was born.

One hundred and one years later, the Beadling Soccer Club continues to thrive. Club members believe it is the oldest United States soccer club still in existence. To mark the centennial last year, the club produced a professional-looking 84-page commemorative book. It celebrated, in words and pictures, Beadling's many accomplishments  - not only in soccer, but also what the mining company for whom the club is named has meant to the neighborhood and city.

But at the same time it looks backward, Beadling Soccer Club also looks ahead. The club has changed in ways unimaginable to the founding European immigrants, who a century ago organized the first company team. Youth soccer began in the 1960s, and Beadling's U-19 team reached the McGuire Cup final four in 1984. In 1988, the club took over the powerful South United teams, and began developing a high quality professional coaching staff. Today's staff members include the University of Pittsburgh's women's coach.

Significantly for a club where females long played a behind-the-scenes, supportive role, girls soccer has boomed at Beadling. In 1992, the U-13s became the first girls team from Western Pennsylvania to win a U.S. Youth Soccer Region 1 championship.  Today, half of the 20 youth teams are for girls.

More than 50 state cup winners

Beadling boasts more than 50 state cup winners. more than four times any other Western Pennsylvania club.  Its teams have played on both coasts and over-seas, including France and Poland.  Beadling is now a member of the prestigious Continental Alliance of top clubs, extending from Philadelphia to Minneapolis and Denver.

In an age when many youth clubs form, flourish and then flounder in about the time it takes for a president's child to move through the ranks, Beadling is different. The club's roots are part of its strength, says president Denny Kohlmyer   He is living proof: A Beadling alumnus who went on to play semi-professionally in the old American Soccer League. worked in the front office with the Major lndoor Soccer League's Pittsburgh Spirit, and now owns the K and K Soccer Store in his home city. KohImyer's grandfather, father and brothers also played for Beadling.

"A lot of kids today take pride in the club," he says. "They come in to our clubhouse and see the old pewter trophies in the wooden cases. They come to our banquet, they hear the old-timers speak, and they're amazed at the conditions these guys played in, the physical stuff they went through. It gives them a real sense of history about the game, the idea that soccer didn't just develop a few years ago."

Kohlmyer notes that the sense of shared pride goes both ways. Former players in their 60s, 70s, even 80s - some of them members of the Beadling Hall of Fame enjoy watching youth games on Saturday afternoons. It gives them satisfaction to realize the game they love endures today. Kohlmyer adds that the old-timers have no problem with girls soccer. "They're glad people like their granddaughters are getting a chance to succeed," he says.

A seventh-generation descendant

Kohlmyer's daughter, a college sophomore, thinks it is "pretty impressive" that her great-grandfather played for the same club. Kohlmyer s son, 15, "thinks about it less," the chairman says. But their fourth-generation pedigree pales in comparison  with 13-year-old Kelly Trax: She is a seventh-generation Beadling descendant.

Sometimes of course. a club gets dragged down by its past. Directors too often look backward, to the way things were, rather than forward. to the way they will be.

"I and many others realize that the past was great. But we know the future is important, too." Kohlmyer says. "We balance our tradition with what we have to do to enhance the future of soccer. That's why we travel so much. Being located here in Western Pennsylvania, we have to go out and find the competition that's going to make us better."

But plenty of other clubs do what the Pittsburgh club does, and don't last anywhere near 101 years. How does Beadling do it?

"I think too many people today do things just for money, or themselves," Kohlmyer explains. "But there's more to life than that. I think a lot of people around here want to give something back to the sport that meant so much to them, and to the kids who are following in their footsteps. At Beadling we've always tried to focus on the game, and all it's meant for everyone in the long-term. I like to think we're succeeding at that."

MORE ABOUT BEADLING

• The Beadling Soccer Club is named for three Beadling brothers, first-generation Americans who in 1883 opened a mine that coincided with the beginning of an entirely new market for coal. Three years later Westinghouse Electric Company was formed, making Pittsburgh a center for the new electrical equipment industry and increasing the demand for coal.
• Joe Luxbacher Sr. is nick-named "Mr. Beadling Soccer." He saw his first game in 1896, and served as a player, coach and administrator.  He also fathered a family of soccer enthusiasts, including Joe Luxbacher, the current University of Pittsburgh coach.
• According to Francis Luxbacher, son of Joe Sr., "The men who played on the Beadling team were playing for their companies and themselves, but more importantly they were playing for their fathers and their home-land.' Management fostered company teams. When a team needed a certain position filled, the company hired a miner specifically for that spot.
• A favorite speaker at Beadling banquets and celebrations was Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop and Hall of Famer Honus Wagner.
• The Beadling men's team won its highest honor in 1954, when they defeated a St. Louis team to win the National Amateur Cup. It was runner-up in 1958-59.
• Beadling youth teams won U.S. Youth Soccer Region1 honors in 1984 (U-19 boys), 1992 (U-13 girls), 1995 (U-13 boys) and 1996 (U-14 boys).