Jock was known not only as a soccer coach, but also as a former boxer and later as a boxing trainer. Here he shows UCLA soccer stars Bela Kertesz and Kanan Awni how to throw a right uppercut.

 

Jock is the fourth winningest all-time soccer coach in US collegiate history, percentage-wise, with 194 wins, 29 losses, and 12 ties, yielding a winning percentage of 85.1% in the years 1949-1966.

He didn't do much "coaching" per se. He didn't need to. Most of his "boys" had had considerable experience playing "football" as children and teen agers in their home countries that included Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Greece, France, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Morocco, Italy, Sweden, and England.

I don't remember "practices". Oh, we might have kicked the ball around on some weekday afternoons, but my recollection is that we showed up on the day of the match, Jock would announce a line-up, and then exhort from the sidelines in his thick Scottish brogue. It is said that he carried a flask to the matches and offered a nip to the referee and linesmen beforehand.

We played such schools as Pomona College, University of Redlands, and Caltech in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. At one point UCLA had a 28 game win streak that was broken in a 2-1 loss to Santa Ana City College in 1959. Another streak began afterward that stretched to 83 in a row.

It was common for as many as seven or eight of the "all conference" players to be from UCLA. From 1959 to 1961, some them included Kanan Awni (center forward), Ron Levy (goal keeper), Peter Nicklin (right wing), Eddie Lo Presto (left wing), Bill Dinwoodie (forward), Ron Abelman (forward), Hassah Mogahegh (forward), Mike Meyer (forward), Bela Kertesz (full back), and Ray Tabello (full back).

We few Americans played the midfield almost exclusively because of our American football experience. Jock used us to disrupt the opponents' attacks by some pretty rough play. Anything that got past us was usually stopped by our all-conference fullbacks. If not, then very few balls ever got past all-conference goalkeeper Ron Levy.

 

Huttenback
Jock asks Mike Meyer and Rick Berger where the rest of the team is for today's match. Although Jock's teams were good, he always needed to play 11 men to win a match. Bob Huttenback (left), the "minor sports king", "international star", and eventual Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, was co-captain of the "winning soccermen" along with veteran kicker Jack Meighan (right). Jock "reshaped the '49 team into a winning aggregation that was feared and respected by southland teams" (Southern Campus, 1950, p. 470)

 

"In this, their finest year, the fine foursome that skippered the Bruin soccer clan trophy-ward were (l to r) Captain George Kauffman, Coach Jock Stewart, Tom Tuller, and Manager Ray Phillips. In taking the Walter Tetley trophy, the UCLA kickers posted their finest record thus far" (Southern Campus, 1951, p. 267).

 

<PREVIOUS | NEXT>