SPEAKING OF SPORTS
THE 1981 LITTLE GIANT SOCCER TEAM
Celebrating 50 Years of Soccer
MIRACLE IN GREENCASTLE
The Little Giants' victory on the road over DePauw in 1981 featured an unlikely scorer and “one really pissed-off Greek.” by TIM PADGETT ’84
I n t he 1982 Waba sh C ol lege yearbook, there’s a photo of me playing in a varsity soccer game with this riveting caption: “Padgett saves the ball from going out of bounds.” That about summed up my talents. If my mojo was on, I could muster a run down the right wing and send a decent cross to one of our strikers. But scoring goals? I seemed to have no more chance of putting a ball in the net than I did seeing a woman in my C&T class. Which makes what happened on November 7, 1981—versus DePauw in Greencastle—seem all the more miraculous. To say the Wabash Little Giants were underdogs for that soccer season finale— I
especially on the road—would be as obvious as pointing out that oral comps with Bert Stern was a death sentence. DePauw had a very good soccer program. The year before, in fact, the Dannies had gone to the Division III playoffs. Wabash had a very good…football program. And basketball—national champs that year! But soccer was a poorly regarded sibling in 1981. The sport had been varsity at Wabash for more than a decade. But most of us were still Hoosiers whose fathers didn’t know a keeper from a corner kick. The best instruction we’d had as kids was watching a PBS program called Soccer Made in Germany on Sunday afternoons.
Our coach, former Indiana University player Bill Rost, spent much of his four years at Wabash with an understandable grimace on his face. The best headline the yearbook could summon about the 1981 team: “Inexperience and Inconsistency.” That’s not to say we didn’t have genuine futbol talent. Our co-captain, senior midfielder Paul Jones, was a smart, darting playmaker who made the All-Mideast Soccer Team that season. Forward Dimitris “Jimmy” Liatsis, an exchange student from Greece, was a first-team all-conference selection and our leading scorer. Junior fullback Doug Beebe was one of the best fullbacks I ever watched play the game, and certainly the most graceful tackler.
THE 1981 LITTLE GIANT SOCCER TEAM: (standing, from left to right) Kyle Foyer; Jimmy Liatsis; Ryan Lane: Skip Owen; Fred Emhardt; Todd Edwards; ______; Tim Padgett; ______; ______; ______; George Patton; Manny Montan; ______; ______; Brad Carr______; John McLemore; (in front, kneeling) Paul Jones, Scott Dreher; Ilya Schwartzman; Laurent Kahl. Help Us Find the Missing Teammates: This archival photo was missing a caption, and while we’ve identified most of the players, we’ve drawn a blank on a few. If you know the missing names, please email charless@wabash.edu
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