Team History
Haverford became the first intercollegiate men’s soccer program in the country to record 700 all-time wins with a 7-0 victory against Neumann on September 7, 2002.
The oldest organized college soccer team in the nation, the Fords’ rich tradition began a century ago when Richard Gummere ’02 entered a club from the College in a local league. The soccer program soon gained national prominence when Haverford defeated Harvard University, 1-0, in the first modern-day intercollegiate soccer match on April 1, 1905. The Crimson’s team had been started by Haverfordians who went to Cambridge for graduate school.
Haverford was one of the top teams in the nation in the first half of the century, often winning the national title over an essentially Ivy League schedule. The 1945 team was undefeated. The soccer squad was a regional power in the 1950s under its great Scottish mentor, U.S. Olympic coach and Soccer Hall of Famer Jimmy Mills. As late as 1960, two Fords, Harold Taylor and Gyula Kovacsics, both ’61, were named to a first-team All-American eleven that included players from major universities.
In the mid-’70s, Haverford became a frequent NCAA tournament qualifier and won the Middle Atlantic Conference Southern Division five times between 1976 and ’82 under coach Dave Felsen ’66, now headmaster at Friends Central School near Philadelphia, and Stanley “Skip” Jarocki ’69.
Joe Amorim became head coach in 1983 and won three more MAC South titles, and knocked off undefeated national #1 Elizabethtown in the 1988 MAC final. A key player for the championship team, NCAA Postgraduate Scholar alternate Chris Lee ’89, got his master’s degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and now reports for The Washington Post.
Haverford won a school-record 17 games in 1992 and has been a regular contender for the Centennial Conference title. Four-time all-Centennial forward Frank Adamson ’98 scored 49 goals to pass Phil Zipin as HC’s leading career scorer, but was eclipsed himself by former teammate and three-time all-conference first-teamer Rich Billings ’00. In April 2000, Billings’ classmate and roommate, defender Mike Newshel, was named the inaugural Centennial Conference Sportsman of the Year.