Soccer Celebrates 20 years
By Heather Lowhorn
Fridley was part of a group of students who worked hard to bring soccer to AU. In the late ’80s, soccer was a quickly growing sport but still not strongly supported in central Indiana. Fridley and a group of other AU men wanted to play and began a soccer team as a club sport on campus. “We were just a bunch of guys who loved to play and were used to playing back in high school,” says Fridley.
Their goal was bigger than just playing a few games. They wanted to represent Anderson as varsity soccer players. For the three years that soccer was a club sport, the players promoted their games and attracted attention to the sport. “It was tough,” says Fridley. “We were just trying to survive.” They did not have a budget, and they played in borrowed uniforms. A donation from a father of one of the players helped cover some of the expenses. “I remember tireless nights at the copier running off copies of our home schedules to put under everybody’s doors in the dorm rooms. We put signs on all the corkboards and made big signs to put in the cafeteria so people knew when the games were.”
They found support for their cause in Jerry Grubbs MRE ’70, who was the vice president for student life and intercollegiate athletics at that time. He was integral in working with the AU Board of Trustees and pursuing the process of turning the soccer club into an official athletic team on campus. He achieved success during the spring semester 1989.
In the fall of 1989, Fridley was able to play the sport he loved as a varsity player for AU. He realizes what an opportunity that was; many of the club players who played vital roles in establishing men’s soccer as an intercollegiate sport never got to play as varsity athletes.
In the early 1990s, women on campus wanted their shot at varsity soccer, too. Art Leak, university registrar and former head coach of women’s soccer, took up that cause. Leak had been a part of the men’s program as an assistant coach, and he decided to coach a women’s club team at AU. While soccer was just beginning to grow in the Midwest, Leak had grown up around soccer. “I’ve been a part of soccer since I was 16 — my entire life,” says Leak. “I grew up on the east coast and graduated high school in 1975. We were playing women’s soccer back then.”
According to Leak, a group of female students who had played soccer in high school wanted to play at Anderson, but AU didn’t have any soccer team to offer them. “Fortunately we had a vice president for student life at that time who was very open and receptive,” says Leak. Again, that person was Jerry Grubbs. So it was decided that women’s soccer would be a club sport in 1992, and the university would gauge the response.
“That first year we showed that we had a tremendous amount of interest and were so successful that they elevated us to varsity status after one year,” says Leak. He also says that Title IX legislation requiring schools to offer equal opportunities to men and women helped speed up the process. In 1993 the AU women’s soccer team played their first season.
Over the years, both programs have continued to grow stronger. After graduating, Fridley became an assistant men’s soccer coach and became the head coach in 1994. Leak coached the women’s team until 2001, when Fridley took over the women’s program, too. Both the men’s and women’s teams have taken multiple trips to Europe. Both teams have had many all-conference and academic all-conference players. The men have won two Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference championships, two HCAC post-season tournaments, and had three conference MVPs.
The women have played in three conference tournament championships and have won the National Soccer Coaches of America Academic All-American award for 11 straight years. The men have won that award 13 years in a row. “That means we keep over a 3.0 GPA as a team,” says Fridley. “I think that is what I am most proud of.”
