Soccer in San Antonio | 1891-1970

These two photographs are the earliest representation of both “American Football” and “Football Soccer” in Central Texas. Taken in 1891, the pictures represent portraits of two football teams, one representing the Mission Athletic Center, the other the San Antonio Amatuers. The reporter smirke at the idea that ‘soccer’ could be the first football team in San Antonio.

Soccer was the first football team in San Antonio.

This picture marks a moment in organized leisure, where men in san Antonio emulated what they learned of soccer leagues in Britain, creating teams out of the already exclusionary associations in which they were members. Given the relative distance between San Antonio and Great Britain, this exercise in homosocial male leisure may have had more to do with separating themselves by participating in a game unfamiliar to their less clued-in neighbors.

To people accustomed to the tight-fitting shirts and short shorts of contemporary soccer, one set of uniforms bears a remarkable similarity to baseball uniforms for the gilded age; the other team’s kit seems akin to woolen bathing outfits. Remarkably, athletes on both teams seem remarkably comfortable wearing caps to indicate their membership on their “football” teams.

The game is recorded having happened on 11/22/1891. The clubs adopted the game, partly, because “baseball was a summer game.”

“San Pedro Springs is Cradle of Sports in San Antonio Dating Back to Civil War,” San Antonio Express, 11/17/1935, 28. (pdf file)

Places:

San Pedro Springs park
2200 N. Flores Avenue
San Antonio, TX 787202

“Soccer is bound to win,” crowed the headline in the Sunday sports pages in the Statesman. The reporter pointed out that most students at the male private-school found ‘Football’ “not playable by a representative portion of the university.” Soccer, because it “required very little equipment,” “permitting the man of slender build… to develop initiative, courage, agility and speed.” According to the reporter, soccer fulfilled the small d democratic principles of organized athletics: “we want a safe and sane sport that every one of us can play and enjoy. We do not want an elaborate coaching system… We just want to feel fit [and] play a hard, fast game without fear of serious injury… and do this regardless of the weight of the men with whom we play. In a game like soccer a big man has nothing on his smaller opponent. Speed and courage are more in demand than strength.”

This is the first of many articles in Texas sports pages declaring the future victory of soccer over football and baseball. Each time, people reported varying reasons, most of them involving the low cost, easy field maintenance, unbaroque regulations, democratic access, and low relative risk of the sport. Few of them discussed the appeal of the game to spectators, most of them siding with the joys of participation. Still, despite the obvious superiority of soccer, writers continually found themselves predicting the future victory of soccer. Thus, “soccer is bound to win.”

“Soccer is bound to win,” Austin Statesman, 12/19/1909, 21 (pdf file)

Places:

Austin Statesman
305 S. Congress Avenue
Austin, TX 78704

Soccer coverage in Texas often indexed the way people in Texas understood places outside of the United States. The first image of soccer players in the Austin Statesman demonstrates this fascination with the other within. The picture depicts a man after a ball has been kicked slightly airborne, arms counterbalancing the fully splayed right leg. He is wearing the full length pants and sweater jacket associated with organized association football [aka soccer]. To our contemporary eyes, the player’s haircut has an air of a fauxhawk; the rough printing of the photo in the Statesman makes it resemble clearly racist depictions of Japanese and other Asians in U.S. popular culture. Mr. Matsuda, an award-winning Harvard University athlete, easily stood in for the lure and loathing athletic men of color posed to others, and points to the way Americans both emulated and disdained the people who played a sport also popular outside of the United States.

“Athlete wins laurels,” Austin Statesman, 12/26/1909 (pdf file)

Places:

Austin Statesman
305 S. Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78704

The San Antonio Express announced the inauguration of challenge matches in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, with the expectation that teams connected to railroads working the corridor between Monterrey, San Antonio, and St. Louis could play local stand-out teams. The two teams - ‘The Spaniards’ and ‘The Internationals’ – emerged out of the established rail workforce, being given time from work to practice. The article supplied a roster for the internationals – the team included the Cement and Soap factory magnate Juan Brittingham and a Lesser alongside the Calderons, Garcias, and Torres that composed the majority of the team.

The Internationals offered to challenge teams in El Paso, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, indicating that an organized game had already started in these four Texas cities before 1912.

“to play soccer football,” San Antonio Express, 12/01/1912, 13. (pdf file)

Places:

Estacion de Trenes de Chihuahua
Calle Mendez 2203
Pacifico, Ruta Sur II,
31020
Chihuahua, Chih, Mexico

Antigua Estacion de Ferrocarriles
Sin Nombre de Col 19
San Nicolas de los Garza
Monterrey, Mexico

San Antonio Station
350 Hoefgen Street
San Antonio, TX 78205

“That soccer football will become a permanent and important sport at the University of Texas at Austin is not a remote possibility.” This prediction, which is true for women’s soccer at UT Austin, emerged in a particular context. The Houston Highlanders challenged the University of Texas to a game; the article reorted that the athletics was interested in scheduling ‘football soccer’ games with clubs in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The distinction between university, amateur and professional sports seemed to be more of a borderland zone than a hard sharp wall.

Students and residents played ‘football soccer’ on fields that are now the Jester Athletic fields on San Jacinto. This location meant that the university drew a strict color line separating students from their black and Mexican neighbors; this color line may have also complicated the ability of the university to engage club teams in the ethnically diverse and working-class cities of Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio.

“University may take up soccer,” San Antonio Express, 01/09/1913. 14. (pdf file)

Places:

Hatch Field (historical)
1910 San Jacinto Drive
Austin, TX 78712

In 1924, la Prensa decided to publish its first poem dedicated to soccer – or to the everyday poetics of children playing in the streets.

Jugando de sol a sol,
no los puedo resistir,
y con eso del ‘futbol’
no se va poder vivir.

Playing sunup to sundown
there is no defense
with soccer balls everywhere
I don’t know how we’ll live

The narrator clearly marks the game of street soccer as something relatively new. The ball bounces everywhere, kids slide tackle all the time, scream each other, and – at the end of each game – there is a new world champion. The balls bounce everywhere, tumbling everything over, from glasses to breast-feeding children. Jose Rodao ends his poem with he joy of the children playing and his desire to push them off the street: ‘Angelitos de mei vida, que capon os voy a dar!

The author seems to agree that he and all the other working adults in the city find kids playing soccer to be a powerful and entertaining nuisance.

Historian Josh Nadel emphasizes that soccer leagues did not take off in Mexico until after the armed phase of the Revolution in Mexico ended. Like Argentina, soccer emerged in ports and in places with British investments. Like Uruguay and Argentina, the mass movement of people to cities overlapped with the arrival of soccer to public parks, leading to it becoming a popular street game. In northern Mexico, baseball seems to have played that initial role and then soccer.

“Los chiquillos y el futbol,” San Antonio La Prensa, 07/27/1924 (pdf file)

Josh Nadel, Futbol: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014)

Places:

La Prensa de san Antonio
816 camaron Street
San Antonio, TX 78212

La Radiotelefonia | 08/20/1924 (pdf file)

English immigrant T.J. Warhurst set up the framework for adult recreational soccer. Clearly in touch with other team captains who put together games haphazardly, the announcement promised to establish a calendar of games on an established field.

The article points to soccer’s need to connect to small businesses. The article points out that Arthur Drury, local hotelier, donated a trophy which he placed in the window of the Hertzberg Jewelry Company. This trophy, however, was meant to be handed to the champion of a local school tournament. Schools and parents, however, did not take Drury’s bait. Adult recreational soccer continued to the present, while schools abandoned competitive soccer in the late 30s, taking it up later in the 1970s.

Soccer League to be Launched in Fall | 07/01/1925 (pdf file)

Places:

Drury Plaza Hotel
105 S. Mary Street, San Antonio, TX 78205

On 10/04/1931, the Mexican Soccer Association hosted a charity triple header. Mexico F.C., the top team in Texas in the United States Football Association faced off against Nacional, the top team in the amateur football association of Texas. All three games were scheduled to be played in Van Daele Field, obviously during the of season for the san Antonio Missions baseball team. The extended use of the stadium allowed the fundraiser to bring in more spectators.

The Cruz Azul mutual aid association distributed relief funds for Spanish-speaking families excluded from the relief rolls in San Antonio, one of the cities hardest hit by the recession in the state with the highest number of repatriates in a city whose democratic political organization relied on Mexican and African American votes to stay in office.

Van Daele Field became a regular field for soccer playoffs and championship games in San Antonio, becoming part of an extended off-season lease in the late 1930s.

Charity Tournament Cruz Azul | 10/04/1931 (pdf file)

Places:

Van Daele Field
2001 S. Laredo Street
San Antonio, TX 78207

Gregorio Kid Reyes announced a new series of columns that he dedicated to the proper physical education for women. He observed that Mexican women in the thousands both in Mexico and the States started engaging in athletic activities. However, he raised a note of caution, worried that too much exercise might bring on “enfermedades peligrosas [dangerous illnesses]” and women might lose their “promised beauty” by indulging too heavily in sports, be it swimming or soccer.

“El atletismo entre las mujeres,” San Antonio La Prensa, 06/10/1934, p.4 (pdf file)

Places:

La Prensa de san Antonio
816 camaron Street
San Antonio, TX 78212

These two photographs are part of a larger spread featuring the benefits of college to parents and their children. Here, the College of the Incarnate Word emphasizes that “physical education is compulsory,” and that activities include swimming, tennis, and soccer. The basketball team is featured in the photo below.

When I shared the photograph and the reality of boys and girls city league soccer in 1920s san Antonio, Rebecca Klieer, (the World Cup Generation) retold some of the stories her mother heard from her mother regarding effort in basketball. They only played three quarters. They were encouraged to shoot underhanded (the basket or the granny), and they had to wear stockings and wool skirts. In San Antonio.

The public memory of women and girl’s participation in soccer in the 1920s and 1930s vanished, probably during World War II. When women’s adult recreational leagues started up in the 1970s, reporters regularly referred to them as ‘the first’ or ‘after being tired of watching soccer on the sidelines, women … ’ Researching soccer through the public record has brought a focus on what may have happened to women’s sports in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

“Physical training" San Antonio Express, 07/31/1932, 32. (pdf file)

Places:

University of the Incarnate Word
4301 Broadway Street
San Antonio, TX 78209

These two photographs are part of a larger spread featuring the benefits of college to parents and their children. Here, the College of the Incarnate Word emphasizes that “physical education is compulsory,” and that activities include swimming, tennis, and soccer. The basketball team is featured in the photo below.

When I shared the photograph and the reality of boys and girls city league soccer in 1920s san Antonio, Rebecca Klieer, (the World Cup Generation) retold some of the stories her mother heard from her mother regarding effort in basketball. They only played three quarters. Their training encouraged them to shoot underhanded (the basket or the granny), and they had to wear stockings and wool skirts. In Texas in the heat.

The public memory of women and girl’s participation in soccer in the 1920s and 1930s vanished, probably during World War II. When women’s adult recreational leagues started up in the 1970s, reporters regularly referred to them as ‘the first’ or ‘after being tired of watching soccer on the sidelines, women … ’ Researching soccer through the public record has brought a focus on what may have happened to women’s sports in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

“Physical training,” San Antonio Express, 07/31/1932, 32. (pdf file)

Places:

University of the Incarnate Word
4301 Broadway Street
San Antonio, TX 78209
FG9J+2X San Antonio, Texas

The Works Progress Administration promised jobs to people to work on the shared infrastructure that connected people living in the United States. The article highlights the promise and the challenge of the WPA. The program announced that the WPA would start with the soccer fields at San Pedro Park, “as the grass has grown knee high and the attempts of persons interested in the game to cut it with lawn mowers have failed on account of the dense growth.” The article also points out that these jobs will only be available to “the residents of Bexar County who are American citizens. After these come American citizens who reside outside of the county and last come the aliens.”

The writer did point out “that many of the residents here who are citizens of a foreign country are in dire need and need some plan to help them.” As many know, one of the plans involved moving families of Mexican descent to Mexico, a plan known as repatriation.

3,000 Persons to Get Jobs | 11/02/1932 (pdf file)

Places:

San Pedro Springs Park
2200 N. Flores
San Antonio, TX 78212

The Mexican league started leasing fields; baseball stadiums leased their fields to soccer leagues in the off-season. This financial exchange enabled the league to start admitting more people and charging spectators to watch the games. By moving the games off public parks, this marked a new stage in the history of adult recreational soccer. The associations held more responsibility and more authority over their ability to hold the field, especially given the possibility of more expansive publicly policed color lines and the broad push across Texas to move ‘ethnic mexicans’ back to Mexico.

Here, La Prensa de San Antonio provides a passionate description and analysis of what might happen in this showdown between the two highest ranked teams in San Antonio.

“Dos grandiosos juegos de futbol,”San Antonio, La Prensa, 01/18/1934 (pdf file)

Places:

Tech Field
177 Buffalo Run
San Antonio, TX 78205

San Pedro Springs Park
2200 N. Flores Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78202

The San Antonio Express started covering matches in the Mexican league and in the City league in the 1920s. This picture of the ‘Houston Elevens’ captures the people who took a train or carefully drive from Houston to san Antonio to compete in the South Texas final. The visiting team itself included players with Spanish, German, French and British last names, and had various skin tones as well.

The reporter did not comment on the national or ethnic origins of the players – other than the inclusion of their name in the roster. This tone marks how people took soccer for granted as part of the San Antonio urban landscape.

“Houston Soccer Team Plays Here,” San Antonio Express, 03/25/1934, 44. (pdf file)

Places:

Eagle Field.
Now part of Brackenridge High School Athletic Complex
400 Eagleland Drive
San Antonio, TX

The photograph features the Texas state champions, The Internationals. Based in the Mexican Soccer league, which was the City league, the Internationals came out of the earlier (non-mexican league) and the players have a majority ethnic German background, with two Latino and one Italian surname included. The city league collapsed after a minor furor over players double-dipping and playing on teams in both the city and the Mexican leagues. The remaining teams joined the Mexican league. Integration, San Antonio style.

This is the period when teams take on the name of their sponsors. Records for this period record the following team names: the Prison Guards, the Alamo Insurance Company, Guerra Ambulance Company, Galan Construction, and Ortiz produce.

Other amateur teams emerge, named after cities or teams in Mexico, like Club America, Monterrey, and Saltillo.

“State soccer champions,” San Antonio Express, 04/16/1934 (pdf file)

Background: On February 5, 1930, the Express reported on the successes of the club team, The Houston Latin Americans.

Places:

Eagle Field
400 Eagleland Drive
San Antonio, TX 78210

San Pedro Springs park
2200 N. Flores
San Antonio, TX 78202

United Fidelity Life Insurance Company
Dallas, TX *

This is one of the last articles providing an in depth discussion of the different teams involved in the Mexican Soccer Association in the Prensa de San Antonio. Coverage of soccer continues in San Antonio. However, it is the Hearst-owned San Antonio Express that provides the coverage and regular discussion.

The article also shows the breadth of sponsorship across San Antonio for amateur soccer.

The teams mentioned in the article are:

Carta Blanca ‘Meseros’ [waiters]
Diamond Jewelry Shop ‘joyeros’ [jewelers]
González Funeral Home “Camilleros” / ‘Stretcher bearers’
Club Internacional
Lakeview Grocers “abarroteros”
San Juan Seminarians ‘Seminaristas’

“Tres Buenos Juegos Presentara la Asociación Mexicana de Fútbol,” la Prensa, 11/16/1934 (pdf file)

Places:

San Pedro Springs Park
2200 N. Flores Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78202

San Juan Seminary / Assumption Seminary
Archdiocese of San Antonio
2718 Woodlawn Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78228

These two photographs are the earliest representation of both “American Football” and “Football Soccer” in Central Texas. Taken in 1891, the pictures represent portraits of two football teams, one representing the Mission Athletic Center, the other the San Antonio Amatuers. The reporter smirke at the idea that ‘soccer’ could be the first football team in San Antonio.

Soccer was the first football team in San Antonio.

This picture marks a moment in organized leisure, where men in san Antonio emulated what they learned of soccer leagues in Britain, creating teams out of the already exclusionary associations in which they were members. Given the relative distance between San Antonio and Great Britain, this exercise in homosocial male leisure may have had more to do with separating themselves by participating in a game unfamiliar to their less clued-in neighbors.

To people accustomed to the tight-fitting shirts and short shorts of contemporary soccer, one set of uniforms bears a remarkable similarity to baseball uniforms for the gilded age; the other team’s kit seems akin to woolen bathing outfits. Remarkably, athletes on both teams seem remarkably comfortable wearing caps to indicate their membership on their “football” teams.

The game is recorded having happened on 11/22/1891. The clubs adopted the game, partly, because “baseball was a summer game.”

“San Pedro Springs is Cradle of Sports in San Antonio Dating Back to Civil War,” San Antonio Express, 11/17/1935, 28. (pdf file)

Places:

San Pedro Springs park
2200 N. Flores Avenue
San Antonio, TX 787202

The San Antonio Express decided to publish an expose of communist subversion. The only relationship it has to soccer in the United States is that the sabotage instruction workbook was hidden in a book titled ‘Reglamento Oficial de Futbol’ [the official soccer rule book] and that this soccer rulebook was found hidden in a large sardine can. Chapter titles included “sabotaje a lineas electronicas de baja y alta tension [Sabotage to high and low voltage electric lines.”

Published when concern with Communist subversion was rising across the United States, this article pointed out the way people in the United State could treat soccer like a deeply foreign and threatening presence.

On the front page of the sport section, local reporters touched on the scores in the local soccer league. Staff actions demonstrated a clear disconnect between the sports reporters and the front page and editorial staff.

Sardine Can yields sinister rules for red sabotage in U.S. | 11/29/1950 (pdf file)

Places:

San Antonio Express
301 Avenue E
San Antonio, TX 78205

Just an action shot of someone getting fouled in a game. A first for the Express

Noteworthy are the local businesses that still sponsored teams. One is called Garza Finance, the other Busy Bee Company. World War II also marked the advent of navy, air force and army recruits and officers who played soccer. The move north from downtown marked the appearance of a new and more powerful constituency for soccer in Central Texas: the military

“Soccer action,” San Antonio Express, 02/06/1951, 18. (pdf file)

Places:

Brackenridge Park
3700 N. St. Marys Street
San Antonio, TX 78212

The City of San Antonio started sponsoring soccer clinics in city parks across San Antonio’s south and west side. The coverage here reflects both the enthusiasm of the sponsors – “over 300 football shoes donated” – and the joy of kids trying on sports equipment: “Anyone can imagine 200 kids trying shoes on for size and the confusion and havoc that followed.” Recent discussion of the Apache Alazan Courts has emphasized the ways the housing connected residents to city authorities in an inclsusive and democratic manner. This vignette adds to this contemporary reassessment of the importance of the ‘Courts’, after their recent destruction by the city.

“A miniature tornado,” San Antonio Express, 11/19/1951, 15.

Paula Allen, “Alazan-Apache Courts were a major improvement on the housing they replaced,” San Antonio Express News, 10/21/2017 (pdf file)

Places:

Alazan Apache Courts
1011 S. Brazos
San Antonio, TX 78207

“Sigue por muy buen camino el balonpie juvenil,” / Youth soccer is taking a good path

Veteran journalist I. Arellano decided to review the youth city league during the exhibition season to highlight the sport’s gains in San Antonio. Please recall that 20 years earlier, Arellano had been impressed with the news that women and men had started playing soccer in Mexico and the United States, moving the cause of women’s modernity to (literally) new fields.

Two decades later, Arellano may have simply been glad to find some drama in a soccer game and a coming soccer season. He pointed out that the Tigres were doing well, that the Santa Fe Boys Club challenged them despite their relative lack of soccer experience, and that the 3-1 score did not reflect the heart of the more novice team. Responsibly, I. Arellano named eleven kids who played that day, names to watch for in the history of sports in San Antonio.

Cite the news article as:

Ivan Arellano, “sigue por muy buen camino el balmpie juvenile,” La Prensa de San Antonio, 01/31/1954, n/p. (pdf file)

Places:

Santa Fe Episcopal Church
1108 Brunswick Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78211

Soccer Fields:
Mission Concepcion Athletic Fields
714 E Theo Ave, San Antonio, TX 78210

Operation Wetback snapped up a group of young athletic men on their way to a tournament in San Antonio. That is, the U.S. Immigration Service detained Los Kikos, the top amateur team in Pachuca Hidalgo on their way to play the top teams in the san Antonio area, including the two teams at the Lackland Air Force Base. After some interpreting and quick military intervention, Immigration Services allowed los Kikos to make their way on to the different air force bases and public parks that made up the soccer scene in san Antonio in the 1950s.

This happy scene masks a tense compromise between the cold war principles of an inclusive war against communism abroad and the nativist expulsion of racial minorities in the United States in the 1950s

“Everybody happy as interpreter Raquel Torres congratulates Kikos,” San Antonio Express, 02/24/1954, 13 (pdf file)

Places:

Lackland Air Force Base
W Military Dr,
Lackland AFB, TX 78236

Estadio de Hidalgo
Ex Hacienda de Coscotitlán,
42080
Pachuca, Hgo., Mexico

Between February the 19th and February the 24th, the Kikos junior soccer team from Pachuca Hidalgo ran askance with Immigration and Naturalization Services. The INS detained them. The combined efforts of local soccer authorities and Lackland Air Force base authorities convinced the INS to release them. On February 24th, the photo points out the ways women could participate in (male) adult recreational soccer – as interpreters.

Photo Kikos | 02/19/1956 (pdf file)

Places:

Brackenridge Park Polo Fields
915 E Mulberry Ave, San Antonio, TX 78212

“Los Kikos de Pachuca le ganaron a la Selección San Antonioana 3-2” / The Kikos of Pachuca beat the San Antonio All-Stars 3-2”

La Prensa focused on local sports news, covering it with the detail and brio usually reserved for college football in Texas. Los Kikos presence in san Antonio was part of a broader push by the city league and Lackland Air Force Base to bring local attention to the scene in San Antonio. The game itself was dramatic, as the underdogs [San Antonio] scored in the first two minutes. Los Kikos maintained control of the ball, displaying precise teamwork - ‘excelente juego de conjunto’ – and scoring the next three goals. San Antonio obtained a penalty in the last five minutes and scored, bringing drama back to the last ten minutes.

Arellano also commented on the game between Max Martinez Funeral Home and the Bryan-based Allen Military Academy, noting that the high schoolers did well against an established club in the San Antonio city leagues. Allen Military Academy invited the Max Martinez Funeral Home team to Bryan, for another set of exhibition games and a rematch.

Cite the article as:

Ivan Arellano, “Los Kikos de Pachuca le ganaron a la selección San Antonioana 3-2,” la Prensa de san Antonio, 02/21/1956 (pdf file)

“los cadetes extranjeros han organizado un excelente equipo y en tres semanas lo han colocado como uno de los mejores del Estado de Texas.” [The Lackland foreign cadets have established an excellent team and in the span of three weeks they have become one of the best teams in South Texas region [which includes Houston].”

The broad situation with ‘Los Kikos’, the Pachuca Mexico based team seems to have enthralled San Antonio. The cadets in training at the Lackland AFB Language institute expressed their frustration with barely losing when they played against the Pachuca team while wearing ‘tennis sneakers.’ The cadets made official requests to be allowed to go to Mexico – a third country without the racial restrictions on public space cadets faced in San Antonio – to engage in sports and cultural diplomacy.

Following articles in the San Antonio Express made it clear that the Lackland AFB and the San Antonio Soccer Association decided that it would be easier to invite ‘Los Kikos’ back to San Antonio to be the core of a regional invitational tournament. This tournament included the full variety of military teams, from the Brackenridge medics, the Lackland Language School Kickers, the Lackland medics, the Lackland Warhawks, and the Kelly Civilians.

“los de lackland quieren ir a Pachica, Hidalgo,” San Antonio La Prensa, 02/28/1956 (pdf file)

Places:

Lackland AFB
2602 Luke Blvd
Lackland AFB, TX 78236

"Who knows, maybe this old universally played game may gain its rightful place in the Texas sports picture.”

The cold war transformed the prospects for soccer in San Antonio. Dan Klein, a local sports commentor, pointed out that “SASA is getting some solid help in selling the game of soccer. It’s coming from excellent foreign players stationed at Lackland and Brooke Army Medical Center.” Moreover, “more and more U.S. servicemen are learning the game while stationed abroad. It’s played in 60 nations.” Dan Gallegos, a referee and recently retired player wondered, “why shouldn’t the game draw 5,000 persons [like it had at the Brackenridge Polo Fields in the past]? It’s a highly skilled game and as tough a test for a conditioned athlete as you can find. What other sport calls on an athlete to keep on the run for one and a half hours?” This coverage matches the movement of fields north and west to locations closer to local army bases and medical facilities.

Frank Klein, “the rhubarb patch,” San Antonio Express, 02/28/2956, 47. (pdf file)

Places:

Pittman-Sullivan Field
1101 Iowa St,
San Antonio, TX 78203

Brackenridge Polo Fields
915 E Mulberry Ave,
San Antonio, TX 78212

Brooke Army Medical Center
3551 Roger Brooke Dr,
San Antonio, TX 78219

Lackland AFB Visitor Center
2602 Luke Blvd,
Lackland AFB, TX 78236

The San Antonio Express feature on the primacy of the Lackland AFB’s primacy in the 1950s Texas soccer scene took the broad geographic reach of cold war staffing for granted. Here, in the photo, German military cadets who came of age in the aftermath of the partition of West and east Germany stood with Colombian air pilots. The German pilots looked forward to training exercises and potential land invasions. In Colombia, the air force played a key role in counterinsurgency efforts against the rural uprising during the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship. Enrollment at the language school in Lackland brought the third world and first world anti-communist military efforts to central Texas, in this case state match ups against the Texas A&M club team.

The roster included: Axel Teichman, Sergio Rodriguez, Luis Perez, Eugenio Ramirez, Ernest Trauth, Bernd Keubart, D.G. Filsinger, Hagen Heulfert, Joachim Zeiger, and Hermann Warmuth

“Lackland Soccer Club, made up of German and Colombian Cadets,” San Antonio Express, 11/04/1956, 48. (pdf file)

Places:

Lackland Parade Field
Bong Avenue,
Lackland AFB 78236

Defense language Institute
English language Center
2235 Andrews Ave,
Lackland AFB, TX 78236

“Everybody is happy”

Between February the 19th and February the 24th, the Kikos junior soccer team from Pachuca Hidalgo ran askance with Immigration and Naturalization Services. The INS detained them. The combined efforts of local soccer authorities and Lackland Air Force base authorities convinced the INS to release them. On February 24th, the photo points out the ways women could participate in (male) adult recreational soccer – as interpreters.

Photo | Los Kikos Team | 02/24/1957 (pdf file)

Places:

Brackenridge Park Polo Fields
915 E Mulberry Ave, San Antonio, TX 78212
FG4F+P6 San Antonio, Texas

“El balonpie esta desbancando a otros deportes en los Estados Unidos” / Soccer is displacing other sports in the United States.

La Prensa de San Antonio translated an Associated Press report, telling the world that soccer is the next big thing, with more than 200 schools and 40 colleges and universities adopting it as a varsity sport over rugby. Yes, over rugby. The journalist pointed out that the game “is not as rough as football or as slow as baseball,” guaranteeing wide appeal to players and fans alike. The article touched all the established notes, from its global popularity to its appeal to regions of interest to the United States, ie, Europe and South America.

This is not the first or the last article to make this point in Texas.

“El balonpie esta desbancando a otros deportes en los Estados Unidos,” la Prensa de San Antonio, 02/06/1958 (pdf file)

Places:

La Prensa de San Antonio
816 Camaron St #104,
San Antonio, TX 78212

Another example of the way federal contracts and military bases had started challenging some racial boundaries in San Antonio. The Latino-majority team had not only obtained sponsorship from Kelly AFB, the league had started inviting city teams from some of the smaller cities in northern Mexico for soccer exchanges. This is a great what could have been, if a regional soccer league had developed along the rail lines and highway lines connecting Dallas, San Antonio, Monterrey, and Saltillo.

Cite this article as:

“Kelly AFB Civilians los close game to Piedras Negras,” San Antonio Express, 01/25/1960, page 11 (pdf file)

Places:

Kelly Field Annex
Kelly,
San Antonio, TX 78227

The City of San Antonio opened an additional soccer field in the late 1950s due to increased demand by the Lackland Air Force base. The language academy trained future pilots from Germany, Colombia, Libya, Ecuador and other places in English, so as to help them learn how to use U.S. airplanes and military technology. This photo indicates the importance of keeping Lackland trainees happy and involved in the surrounding community.

“Soccer Open,” San Antonio Express News, 10/16/1960, 49 (pdf file)

Places:

Pittman Sullivan Field
1101 Iowa Street
San Antonio, TX 78203

The front page of the San Antonio Express demonstrated the distance to which soccer had been pushed away from mainstream English language news coverage. The paper covered the sport as something novel and at odds with the expected “American” college bowl and playoff football routine facing San Antonio households at the end of January.

Still, one can only imagine the delight that the family members of Floyd Contreras Richard Lopez, Robert Lopez, Robert Gonzales, Tony Montez, and Eugene Arevalos might have enjoyed at seeing their [Mexican American] kids on the front page.

“In our town,” San Antonio Express, 01/16/1961, 1 (pdf file)

Places:

San Antonio Express News
301 Ave E.
San Antonio, TX 78205

Quote: “see all of the wonderful programs now from Mexico via los toros, bailes, canciones, futbol, musicales, etcetera.”

By 1963, the San Antonio Express recognized that there were a number of bilingual readers who enjoyed watching Mexico-based Spanish language programming and deserved to have their purchasing desires reflected in their newspapers. This ad – selling color televisions with reception strong enough to capture Mexican TV channels – speaks to the way soccer had become integral to the way TV producers presented Mexico to itself and to others. The ad also points to the way U.S. based TV did not include soccer in its base repertoire of sports, making soccer an undeniably Mexican form of TV entertainment.

Could there be anything more quintessentially American than an installment-plan television that advertises the possibility of catching Mexican TV programming? Could there be anything more Mexican than bullfights, folclorico, futbol, musicals and Golden Age cinema? Not in the 1963 San Antonio air waves.

In 1961, Raoul Cortes with a consortium of investors including Emilio Azcarraga, purchased channel 41 and started broadcasting Spanish language broadcasts in UHF, a development that helped prompt direct appeals to bilingual subscribers in the San Antonio Express.

Cite this article as

San Antonio Express-News, “Westinghouse 23” UHF Console TV,” San Antonio Express-News, 02/24/1963, 7. (pdf file)

See also René A. Guzman, “Spanish language T.V. born in San Antonio,” San Antonio Express-News, 06/21/2015, 11/12/2018. (pdf file)

Places:

KWEX
TV- Station
411 E. Durango Boulevard
San Antonio, TX 78204