By: Thomas Dick, Texas A&M Athletics Communications
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In 2017, Aggie Soccer had a celebration of its Silver Season, commemorating the 25th season of the Texas A&M Athletics Department putting its support behind soccer.
But for over a decade before the 'inaugural' 1993 campaign, a group of persistent pioneers worked hard to chisel a foothold in Aggieland for what has become one of Texas A&M's most successful programs.
Throughout the 1970s, fledgling club soccer squads gained popularity. They had varying degrees of success, but without a national governing body to sponsor and promote the sport, there was no outlet for growth.
The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) filled the void left by the NCAA, which only sanctioned men's sports at the time. The AIAW was sponsoring 17 women's sports by the 1980-81 school year with offerings as diverse as basketball and softball to badminton and skiing.
The list did not include soccer.
Things changed in 1980. That year the first national intercollegiate championship was held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with hopes of earning official sanction by the AIAW for the following year.
The 1980 United States Women's Soccer National Collegiate Championship included eight squads from across the country. The tournament included eventual women's soccer powerhouses North Carolina, Harvard and UCLA along with Cortland State, Colorado College, Colorado State and Northern Colorado.
The eighth team? The Texas A&M Aggies.
A squad skippered by Rob Borgeson beat all of the teams in the Texas Women's Intercollegiate Soccer League, earning an invitation to the first-ever national organized tournament for women's college soccer. Nearly all the teams they played were 'varsity' teams funded by intercollegiate athletics departments.
"The one thing that was the most memorable was the fact that that we were all mostly from Texas and we had to play in five inches of snow on the ground in Colorado Springs," Barbara (Brunner) Pereira, a member of the 1980 squad, said. "It was just very memorable and exciting to represent A&M and to play at that level against other college teams."
After an early stumble, the Aggies beat Northern Colorado, 2-1, in their final match to finish in fifth place. Adele Fairman was named to the all-tournament team and would be cemented in history as the Aggies' first All-American for soccer.
"There were some really neat women on the team," Periera said "We were all very close and everyone on the team was smart and accomplished in their degrees."
Cortland State won the tournament title. As a sign of the times, the team from upstate New York drove to Colorado Springs for the championship.
The tournament was a success for Texas A&M and women's soccer. The sport earned the sanctioning of the AIAW for the 1981 season.
The Texas A&M Athletics Department acknowledged the efforts of the 1980 squad by approving a temporary one-year non-scholarship status for the program in 1981. That same year, the Aggies, led by All-American Carol Smith, posted a 16-4-0 record and an eighth-place finish at the AIAW National Championship.
The 1981 Aggies
In 1982, the more financially stable NCAA overwhelmed the AIAW and took over the role of sponsoring women's intercollegiate athletics. Unfortunately, that same year the Aggies' temporary varsity status was revoked by the Athletics Department. Although the 1982 team was ranked as high as sixth nationally, Texas A&M was ineligible to participate in the inaugural NCAA national tournament due to its club status.
The 1982 Aggies
Later that year, the Texas A&M Athletics Department created a new Varsity II status for the women's soccer team. Varsity II was separate and distinct from the University's other three levels of athletic competition (varsity, club and intramural). Sponsored by the Texas A&M recreational sports department, the Varsity II level provided an opportunity for outstanding student-athletes to compete in NCAA national championships, yet it carried no promise of full varsity team status or financial commitment from the Texas A&M Athletics Department.
Texas A&M competed as a Varsity II program from 1983 to 1992 against many of the top women's programs in the nation. During those years, the Aggies compiled a 65-62-12 record under coaches Jim Butts, Laura Johnston, Todd Shoemaker, Debbie Michaels and Troy Farrar. The teams played with determination, grit and spirit, but playing behind the proverbial 8-ball from a financial standpoint they were never able to reach the NCAA Tournament during that span.
"I think the University missed an opportunity by not picking that team in '83," Kim Clack, an Aggie from 1983-85, said. "Especially the year I came in with Tina Luft. We had a standing All-American in Carol Smith and you had Tina, Anna DeFelice and me coming in as high school and club All-Americans. With the talent in the state, we had an opportunity to be a powerhouse. What we still had was a bunch of young women playing soccer because they loved the game and wanted to be a part of the University, too."
The 1987 Aggies
It is doubtless the team bled some talent during those days. Among the most notable is Bettina Bernardi, an All-American with the Aggies, who would transfer to North Carolina, where the commitment to soccer was full throttle, and would earn a pair of national titles.
Texas A&M was still able to attract talent that would have made many schools in the country envious. It came down to their love of Aggieland.
"We had players who were recruited by teams all over the country," Liz Dalton, an Aggie standout from 1986-90, said. "We had players who turned down scholarships to play at North Carolina and other 'soccer schools.' We chose A&M first and soccer second. We're proud of that."
Despite the Varsity II status, the Aggies went toe-to-toe with some of the nation's best.
"I remember we played Central Florida with Michelle Akers (named FIFA Female Player of the Century in 2002)," Nancy Gold, a player from 1986-89, said. "She was such an amazing player. Several other players we played against would make future national teams. Looking back, it was an amazing experience."
In November 1992, then-Texas A&M Athletics Director John David Crow announced the athletics department's decision to elevate the women's soccer program to full varsity status. G Guerrieri was brought on as the athletics department's first head coach and from that point, the program has become a national force.
"Thank goodness for John David Crow's vision for what the soccer program could be and his vision to hire Coach G," Pereira said.
The success of the teams from 1980-92 made it easy for Crow to see the potential for soccer and the ability to succeed on a regular basis.
"I was hired at the end of March, and started on May 1st of '93, and immediately started recruiting," Guerrieri said. "I was able to get some really talented players from around Texas and Oklahoma to be freshmen on the team that started training camp with an open tryout in mid-August on the Simpson Drill Field. There was definitely talent on the '92 Varsity II team, and several players made the inaugural roster for '93, including our captain, Rennie Rebe."
The Aggies went 15-3-1 in 1993 and 14-2-2 in 1994, just being left out of the 24 team NCAA Championship Tournament. They qualified for the '95 NCAA Tournament and are one of only five teams nationally to have been in every subsequent Big Dance.
What you see today at Ellis Field is light years ahead of the days of the persistent pioneers. The women of the 80s and early 90s persisted through challenges the current era likely would not fathom.
Equipment?
"We had uniforms," Gold said. "That was about it. We had to provide our own equipment – shin guards and shoes."
Team travel? Although it eventually evolved to an occasional bus ride and a few times they even scrounged up enough funding for a flight, for the most part it was cars. Not even 15-passenger vans. Cars.
"Travel was not very luxurious," Clack said. "We usually piled into cars and went somewhere."
Road trips were added and dropped depending on the money flowing in from sponsorships. In 1991, they had to drop out of a pair of tournaments in Florida because they came up short of funds.
Even on their own campus, the squad was a vagabond group. The "home field" varied from year-to-year, sometimes even match-to-match. Locations included Cain Field and Simpson Drill Field as well as various intramural fields around campus. Basically, wherever you could fit in a soccer field was eligible for use.
"When I played we had two main places we would play," Gold said. "One of them we called Fire Ant Hill. You can guess it was known for having fire ants."
The seemingly temporariness of the program extended to the coaching staff. With very little funding, the ability to keep a coach around for more than a year or two was nearly impossible.
In the earliest years, the mentoring relied on the generosity of some special Texas A&M students.
"I'm so thankful to the volunteer coaches we had," Pereira said. "These guys were students so they were taking their time away from their master's studies, coaching us and trying to lobby the athletics department to take the next step."
Much of what the support the coaches in those days provided came out of their own pockets and occurred unannounced.
"I know Laura Johnston, who was the coach during my time, was investing a great deal of her own money to fund the program," Dalton said. "That wasn't something we were aware of at the time. We would not have been able to go play in some of the prestigious tournaments we were playing in without her doing that. She did it because she wanted us to have the same experience the other student-athletes were having. For that, we are all very thankful to her."
When they did receive a morsel of support, they were grateful.
"My junior or senior year we got to work out at Netum-Steed Laboratory," Gold said. "It felt like an honor because we actually had trainers and saw other athletes, so it was nice to kind of feel like a part of the athletics department."
As the Aggie squads of the 1980s and early 90s were fighting for a place in College Station, the sport was booming across the land. The first year the NCAA sponsored soccer in 1982 there were just 22 Division I institutions participating. By 1986 there were 54 teams and in 1993, when the Texas A&M Athletics Department finally backed the Aggies, the number reached 103. Today there are 335 teams, reaching every nook and cranny of the lower 48 and Hawaii.
"I think it is so phenomenal to be a part of that growth," Pereira said. "It has just been so amazing to see how women in all sports, particularly soccer, have been able to really blossom. I think we still have a long ways to go in regards to women in soccer at the international level, but it's steadily growing."
As every frontier is conquered, the pioneers are remembered in the history books, but often they miss out on the rewards received by those who follow.
"It feels great to be a pioneer," Clack said. "But it's a little sad to have missed out on a real opportunity. I played on women's teams on the club level that won nationals. Those teams were stepping stones for what would become the U.S. National Team. I've always been a step behind, a little bit. A lot of us just came around a few years too early. But truly, I think it's great that the movement basically never died."
At least one of the players from the 1980s sees a similarity between today's Aggie team and the pioneers.
"I think Texas A&M soccer is always competitive due to Coach G," Pereira said. "Coach G and Aggie soccer are successful truly because of not only their skills, but also the character of the women and the coaches involved. That is exactly the same way it was in the 80s when I played."
The bonds are also established with the Aggie soccer teams of today giving the pioneers a sense of pride for what they helped build.
"For what G has done with the program, it's a lot of fun to tell people I played at A&M," Dalton said. "Because they associate it with what it is now. There's a great sense of pride there."
Along the way, something fell through the cracks and the women who laid the foundation for Texas A&M soccer were not awarded letters for their hard work and effort. On October 20, the oversight will be corrected. The players from 1980-92 will be honored at a reception at the Texas A&M Lettermen's Association.
"This is righting a wrong," Texas A&M head coach G Guerrieri said. "We've done great things with Texas A&M soccer since becoming a full varsity sport in 1993, but these women are the pioneers who established a great foundation that showed the administration that the sport could thrive in College Station. I'm excited to formally welcome them back into the Aggie Soccer family."
Through the hard work of Cathy Capps and Isabella Norton at the Texas A&M Lettermen's Association and Senior Associate Athletic Director Jeff Toole, efforts were made to track down members of the team's from 1980-92. Over 120 players from the era have been informed of the belated recognition.
"It's long overdue," Clack said. "I really appreciate that the University is taking the time to reach out and recognize the people who helped get the program on the map, so to speak, so it feels really good."
At a University where traditions are everything, the awarding of an athletic letter may bring on even more meaning.
"It gives me a lot of pride and brings me good memories," Gold said. "I am just proud to be a part of A&M Lettermen's legacy. They have an excellent sports representation and great student athletes. I am just proud to be a part of a larger team."
The 1980 United States Women's Soccer National Collegiate Championship included eight squads from across the country. The tournament included eventual women's soccer powerhouses North Carolina, Harvard and UCLA along with Cortland State, Colorado College, Colorado State and Northern Colorado.
