Ralph Bergeron

Father Harry gave me my first teaching job over at Jesuit High School. I had gone to college on a soccer scholarship and when I came into the interview, I'd asked about whether Jesuit had a soccer program – this was in the late 70s, mind you.  

"Oh, we don't have one of those," said Father. "No no, football is what we focus on here."  

I told him he was missing a big opportunity and he said if I wanted it so badly, I could coach it. So, I asked if he could give me a budget and he said he couldn't do it because he wasn't confident we'd have a team. 

Well, I made an announcement at Jesuit that we were starting a soccer team. Only 15 guys showed up to tryouts and you need 18 to play the game, so I told them that the good news was that they all made the team.  

We started to practice. I practiced the devil out of them. Without a budget, we didn't have money for uniforms, so I approached the track coach and he offered some old uniforms with blue shorts and white tees with Jesuit scrawled across them. I used to make numbers out of duct tape. I couldn't do any numbers with curves, so I had 1s, 4s, 7s, 11s, 14s, 17s, and so on. Now, the numbers would peel off from sweat and gameplay so I'd take them home and wash them and redo the numbers every week and the players would never know what number they'd get. 

Now, one of the fathers of the boys on the team worked for a company that caught menhaden fish and used them for their oil, so this man offered to let me use the old nets from the boats, and they stunk to high Heaven. Oh, they were horrible! When we set up the nets, the other team didn't want to get close to them because they smelled so bad, so they'd be taking long shots and standing far away from the goal. This meant more points for us!  

Anyway, our team started winning. In the meantime, Jesuit's football program wasn't doing so hot. So, on Monday morning during announcements, they'd say something like, oh well, our football team made a great effort Friday night, but we lost to so-and-so, but our soccer team won by a longshot against whatever team we were playing that week. By the end of the year, we were undefeated in our first season and we lost in the finals by just one point!  

So, by the time the second season rolled around, Father Tompson called me into his office and said, "What do you need for the soccer team, Ralph."  

And I responded something like, well, we need uniforms, balls, nets... but Father cut me off there and said, "just give me a number." So, I threw out $2,000.  

"Done!" Father Tompson said.  

Over 200 boys showed up to tryouts for that second season. We ended up going to state again that year. We lost in the finals but we got a trophy, which I'd kept in my home until recently when I was invited to celebrate the 30th year of Jesuit's soccer team. Now it sits in a the trophy case in Jesuit. And that's my favorite memory of Fr. Tompson.  

— Ralph Bergeron