Soccer was truly foreign to the Wichita Falls community when Dr. Michael Flavin arrived on campus in the fall of 1969.
It would be over a year later before Midwestern University students Mark Penny and Tim Casper convinced chemistry professor Dr. Donald W. Rathburn to coach a club team.
Rathburn performed the service to afford the team the opportunity to compete, but he knew he wasn’t the man to advance the program that grew from club status in 1970 to full-fledged intercollegiate status in 1972.
“He admitted he knew nothing about it,” Flavin said. “Many of the players had never even seen a soccer ball. They were definitely the soccer pioneers of this town.”
The team had competed just two seasons as a club team before Athletics Director Gerald Stockton had a new vision for the program.
“He saw where the sport was growing,” Flavin said. “As we were beginning to expand, he had the foresight to see this would be a major intercollegiate sport.”
Flavin took the first raw, but determined team through a 10-game schedule in 1972.
“We had a really good group,” he said. “Because we were so inexperienced, we played a counter-attack game and dropped back in defense. The players never quit and were out there playing as well as they could.”
The team battled through a 1-8-1 season, but played within two goals in eight of the matches with the lone win coming 2-1 over LeTourneau College.
The Indians did more than compete on the field as the team became ambassadors of soccer and Midwestern to the Wichita Falls community.
“A whole bunch of us started working with Wichita Falls Soccer Association as coaches,” Flavin said.
Flavin, who served just one season as head coach of MSU’s newly founded soccer program, wanted to give other children the same opportunities he had while growing up in a soccer-strong St. Louis community and was in the middle of the education effort as Wichita Falls became a soccer hub.
“We had no support and no resources when we decided to make it a collegiate sport, but we wanted to do it,” Flavin said. “We wanted them to get someone that knew what they were doing and that’s when they got Howard Patterson.”
Patterson took the program to national prominence over the next 18 years as the Indians advanced to 10 NAIA national tournaments including a pair of national final appearances hosted at the MSU Soccer Field in 1982 and 1983.
“Howard was an excellent coach,” said Flavin, who continues to be an avid supporter of the program. “We had a good team and the fans were really excited. The growth of soccer on campus also propelled the growth of soccer in Wichita Falls. I just wanted to tie it all together.”
With Flavin’s help and support, MSU turned a small idea from a couple of students into a national powerhouse.
“We’ve had terrific teams and terrific coaches,” Flavin said. “This was something I wanted to get involved with.”
Flavin gained induction into the Midwestern State Athletics Hall of Honor in 2007.
