Patrick Smith (referee)

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Patrick "Pat" Joseph Smith (born November 10, 1923 in Birmingham , England , United Kingdom , † December 7, 2009 in Panama City , Florida , United States ) was an English-American amateur football player , coach and football referee . In 1998 he was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in the "Builder" category .

life and career

Patrick J. Smith was born on November 10, 1923 to Martin and Elizabeth Emily Smith in the English city of Birmingham. As a 13-year-old, he began a rather unsuccessful career as a football player when he took up a striker for his school team. Only over time did he develop into a defensive player after he was informed by a friend who moved to Arsenal in the 1950s, among other things , that he did not have an offensive mentality, but a defensive one. Patrick Smith joined the Royal Marines in 1941 and subsequently served his home country for twelve years. He served on board the light cruiser HMS Sirius , with which he had missions all over the world, be it North Africa , Sicily , Italy , Normandy or Malta . During the Berlin blockade that took place between June 1948 and April 1949 , he was also stationed in Berlin in 1948 . Here he was also often used as a football player, where he played against the French occupation, as well as against a German club and even in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin .

After he left the Royal Marines in 1951, he continued to play amateur football in Saturday and Sunday leagues. Following his military service, he was still in England for around two years before he emigrated with his wife Maureen to the United States in 1953, where the two settled in Dayton , Ohio , and raised three daughters there. Pat Smith reports that he was already an avid amateur soccer player back home. However, after hearing that there was no football sport in the United States , he left his football boots at home in England and emigrated to his new home without them. There, however, to his surprise, he found a soccer team in his new hometown of Dayton, the amateur team Dayton Edelweiss with play in the Ohio-Indiana Soccer League . In the multicultural team, which consisted mainly of Hungarian-Germans , Austrians , an American, a Swiss and an Italian, Pat Smith was the only Englishman at the time.

He pursued his active football career up to the age of 35, before he retired from active sport as his legs no longer played as he wanted and embarked on a short career as a football coach. After some time as player- coach and later the exclusive coach at Dayton Edelweiss , he was the first coach of a men's football team at the University of Dayton in 1958 . Since there were very few football referees in the United States at the time, Smith developed from coach to referee in a very short time and was in this role in various organizations and leagues for four decades. He worked at college level for 15 years , during which time he was used in six semifinals of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), two finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and numerous other semifinals of the NCAA. Due to his success in the field, he was soon elected as the first President of his state's arbitration chapter. Subsequently, he was elected the first president of the newly formed National Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association (NISOA) in 1972 and was active in this office for several years. He also served the NISOA for decades as a trainer in their regional and national camps and as an assessor in numerous college soccer tournaments, including the NCAA finals.

With the advent of high-quality, professional football in the United States in 1967, Pat Smith moved to the new North American Soccer League (NASL). He directed his first game in 1968 in Fenway Park , the then home stadium of the very short-lived franchise Boston Beacons . This year he also directed two so-called bronze boat games, as the clash between the two rival universities of Saint Louis University and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville are called, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis , Missouri . As a referee, he whistled in games of FC Santos , Werder Bremen , Borussia Dortmund , CA Independiente , Bristol City , Manchester City and the Israeli national soccer team . One of his mentors was Eddie Pearson , who also came from England and was about the same age . When Pearson launched the first national football referee training program, Patrick Smith was one of the earliest instructors to join Pearson's staff. Subsequently, he was, among other things, the director of the referee of the American Soccer League (ASL) and was elected Director of Assessment of the NASL in 1977 , which corresponded to about the same task as in the ASL. He held this position until the league was dissolved in 1984, playing an important role in the process of selecting US referees for the FIFA list.

When the national instructor and assessor positions were created in the late 1980s , Pat Smith was one of the first in the United States to be appointed a USSF National Instructor and Assessor by the United States Football Association . Shortly thereafter, he even became the National Director of Assessment and became a member of the National Arbitration Committee of the US Federation; a position he held for seven years. Until his death, Smith was considered a very active and renowned referee trainer and assessor for the United States Soccer Federation . He taught referee certifications in various US states and was particularly busy in Georgia and Florida . Among other things, he trained referees at ten different regional USYSA tournaments, six Olympic Festival Tournaments , the Armed Forces Tournament , the National Amateur Cup and the US Open Cup . He also acted in the home World Cup in 1994 as Video Controller ( video inspector ) and was until 2006 stage Assessor and video Assessor of Major League Soccer . A large number of later professional and FIFA referees attributed their success to the training and experienced leadership of Pat Smith. One of his students, who later even appeared as a referee at a world championship, describes Smit as The Patron Saint of the Referee Community .

Over the years he has not only been honored by his colleagues, students and friends, but has also been accepted into various halls of fame. He is a member of the College Soccer Hall of Fame , the Adult League Hall of Fame , the Southern Ohio Hall of Fame and the High School Coaches of Ohio Hall of Fame . In 1998 he was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in the "Builder" category . Furthermore, the charter member of the National Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association, which among other things also wrote the first NISOA referee manual, was inducted into the NISOA Hall of Fame in 1977. Pat Smith has also received awards such as the SAY Soccer Gold Boot Award , the College Coaches Appreciation Award , the NISOA Honoree Award and was the first recipient of the renowned Eddie Pearson Award , which has been given annually to referees since 1979, which is a significant part of the nationwide training system in the Have US refereeing. He also received an honorary doctorate from Earlham College for his achievements in football over the course of his career , where he served as a referee for 15 years.

He practiced his actual work in civil life as an industrial installer at General Motors in Dayton , where he retired after 33 years. Immediately after retiring, he moved to the coastal city of Panama City , Florida , to be closer to his grandchildren. Here he continued his activities in football at the local level and promoted the football sport, which was not yet too popular in this area. Until 2008, until he was 85 years old, he was a volunteer trainer at Rutherford High School in Panama City. In addition to his successes in football, Smith was considered an avid reader and swore by the importance of reading. In his retirement he worked on a voluntary basis in the federal prison at Tyndall Air Force Base , where he taught inmates to read. He also volunteered at the Parker Elementary School in Panama City for over ten years . He received the Point of Light Award from then Governor Jeb Bush in 2001 for his selfless dedication . Patrick J. Smith passed away on December 7, 2009 at the age of 86 at his home in Panama City. He was survived by his three daughters, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He was also survived by his sister, who still lived in Birmingham, a sister-in-law from Georgia and a brother-in-law from Norfolk , England, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. His wife Maureen Louise died before him; also a great-granddaughter. After his death, a Pat Smith Soccer Scholarship Award was established in his memory and honor . His funeral took place in Panama City on December 12, 2009.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Louis Remembers Old Soccer Rivalry Between SLU & SIUE , accessed September 8, 2016
  2. ↑ According to the following link , he was accepted into this hall of fame in 1974
  3. ↑ Referee Administrative Handbook (p. 63) (pdf; English), accessed on September 8, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Patrick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Patrick Joseph (full name); Smith, Pat (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English-American amateur soccer player, coach and soccer referee
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham , England
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 2009
Place of death Panama City , Florida , USA