(Last night I was the MC for the 50th anniversary banquet for Green-White soccer club--a club that my father co-founded in 1956. They asked me to write a history of the club for the program book, and I'm reprinting it here for anyone who wasn't able to make the banquet)
A Brief History of S.C. Green White
The eighteen young men who gathered to play for the first Green White soccer team in August of 1956 never would have believed that their club would still be playing soccer today, a half century later. The founding members were all of German ancestry, and all knew each other socially as part of the Society of the Danube Swabians, but it was their common love of competitive soccer that led to the founding of the club.
Since that first game fifty years ago, some of the original players have seen their children and grandchildren play under the Green White banner. Each generation has played under slightly different circumstances as the club evolved and changed with the times. Green White left the Danube Swabians in 1982 and became an independent organization. It moved from Chicago to Mt. Prospect, and it has grown into much more than the founding members ever envisioned. From that one men’s team of German Americans, Green White has become a club for everyone of all nationalities and creeds; fielding youth teams, women’s teams, and old timers’ teams as well.
One thing, however, has not changed in the past fifty years: Green White’s devotion to soccer. Like those first eighteen men who played together in 1956, today’s Green White members are bound together by a common love of the sport. We have been blessed with some extraordinary players and members over the years, and many of them are recognized elsewhere in this program book. If you took away any one player’s or member’s contribution at any time over the past fifty years, Green White would not have been Green White.
Green White’s history is here tonight; in the flesh, in the hearts, and in the memories of every person attending this banquet.
Without every single one of you, none of this would have been possible.
