Friday, September 01, 2000

He got the area soccer ball rolling

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By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

Amy (left), Ron, Megan and Nancy Staurovsky at a soccer field near their Villa Hills home. (Mike Simons photo) | ZOOM |

        Summer wanes, kids begin booting balls, and another soccer season kicks into high gear.

        A few years ago, a study by the Soccer Industry Council of America showed Greater Cincinnati has the second highest soccer participation per capita in America.

        Ron Staurovsky, who lives in Villa Hills, remembers when things were much different.

        At 54 and silver-haired, he is senior vice president for a company that provides information technology and management consulting to the health-care industry. He's also a lifelong soccer guy who grew up with the game.

        His hometown of Fairfield, Conn., 60 miles from New York City, was populated by various nationalities who, on Sunday afternoons, played soccer. Ron did, too. He competed in grade school, high school and then at Colgate University, where his team reached the NCAA tournament.

        But when he moved to this area in the late '60s, youth soccer was in its infancy in southwest Ohio. It didn't exist at all in Northern Kentucky.

        Ron wanted to stay involved in the game, so he hooked up with Dick Kleinschmidt, and they coached a youth team in Cincinnati. When Mr. Kleinschmidt was named the University of Cincinnati's first men's soccer coach in 1973, Ron became his assistant.

        About that time, Ron and his wife, Nancy, were starting a family. And Ron started thinking more about youth soccer.

        He approached the Villa Hills Recreation Commission about starting a league. Not many people were familiar with the sport, so he got a couple of youth teams from Cincinnati to play an exhibition game.

        From the outset, Ron says, enthusiasm was high. Soon the Villa Hills Soccer League was up and running, with Ron as president.

        “I will take credit for the idea,” he says, “but certainly the support of the Villa Hills Recreation Commission, and a lot of people who wanted another (recreation) program for their kids — they deserve the credit for really getting it off the ground.”

        The league had humble beginnings.

        “We had trouble finding soccer balls,” Ron says, because many sporting goods stores didn't carry them.

        Parents who knew nothing about the game signed up for clinics and learned how to coach.

        For uniforms, kids brought white T-shirts, and coaches dyed them in whatever color the team picked.

        Bud Cunningham, who was Villa Hills mayor, constructed the first goals by putting posts in the ground and stringing a rope across the tops.

        Just as the Villa Hills league was forming, another group was starting a youth program at the Florence YMCA. In the mid-'70s the groups merged. And over the years, soccer spread to many other communities. Today, the Northern Kentucky Soccer League is the largest in the state, with 3,500 boys and girls participating.

        Two things, Ron believes, helped that early Villa Hills league gain acceptance: Every child got to play at least half of every game. And boys and girls were on equal footing when it came to such things as field assignments, practice times and referees; in the early '70s, that was something of a novel concept.

        “For me,” Ron says, “the key was to try to have something that I knew my own children would be able to participate in.”

        And all three did.

        Amy, 27, Megan, 26, and Robyn, 20, grew up playing soccer in the league their father helped start. All three eventually played varsity soccer at Villa Madonna Academy.

        Now, nobody's saying that because the Staurovsky girls played youth soccer, they grew into fine upstanding, successful young women. Then again, it didn't hurt.

        Amy is marketing and communications manager for the National Football League; Megan is a speech pathologist in Chicago; Robyn is a junior studying telecommunications at Ohio University.

        “It taught me how to set goals, gave me a sense of discipline,” says Amy, who notes that in high school, she didn't always play on winning teams. “It taught me how to deal with success and failure.”

        “I owe all of what I learned about soccer from my dad,” says Robyn. She's not just talking about footwork and technique, either.

        Says Ron: “We often hear Vince Lombardi quoted as saying, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.' The other version I've heard that I think is more appropriate is, "Winning isn't everything, the will to win is.'”

        That's what he tried to impart to his own children, and others he has coached. Also, “the importance of being part of a team. Success is really a team success.”

        Ron Staurovsky feels good about being part of the team that brought soccer to Northern Kentucky.

       

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