Sport: Soccer
Born: December 1, 1897
Died: May 27, 1985
Town: Kearny, New Jersey
Archibald McPherson Stark was born December 1, 1897 in Glasgow Scotland. He and his brother Tommy moved to Kearny, NJ with their parents in 1911. The brothers joined the local youth club, the West Hudson Juniors, and brought their imported skills to the back line. Archie was quick, clever and coordinated and by the fall he was being paid to play for the Kearny Scots (aka the Scottish-Americans), a founding member of the National Association Football League (NAFBL). He became their top scoring and playmaking forward and, at 17, led them to victory in the 1914–15 American Cup. The Scots defeated Brooklyn Celtic in Newark’s Bartell Park, 1–0, with Archie scoring the match-winner. Tommy was a midfielder on the winning team.
It was not unusual during this time for top stars to follow the money and coalesce on deep-pocketed factory teams. Sure enough, the 1916–17 season found Archie playing in Bayonne for Babcock & Wilcox, whose boilers powered everything from battleships to Edison’s laboratory.
After America entered World War I, Archie enlisted and saw action in France. Upon his return, he joined the powerhouse Paterson FC team that made it to the finals of the National Challenge Cup, losing to Bethlehem Steel. After the tournament, he was hired to join the Bethlehem team on a 1919 playing tour of Denmark and Sweden.
Archie’s next stop found him on the Erie AA club back in his hometown of Kearny. Erie won the NAFBL championship—or so it seemed, until the big-wigs at Bethlehem Steel appealed to the league, which reversed its decision and handed the title to Archie’s previous club.
The NAFBL gave way to the better-funded American Soccer League in the 1920s and Archie signed with the New York Field Club. In three years with the NYFC, he scored 45 goals. Bearing down on goal from the right wing in the days before the offside rule was loosened, he was a man who had to be watched like a hawk at all times.
Archie, now in his athletic prime in the 1920s, was regarded as pro soccer’s most dangerous scorer. He commanded a handsome salary and—although he was a level below other Golden Age sports legends like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Gertrude Ederle—among America’s recent immigrant population, his name and his game were very well known. Archie’s star continued to rise in 1924, when he rejoined Bethlehem Steel. The Steelworkers, as their fans called them, shifted Archie to the center-forward position and surrounded him with well-paid, experienced Scottish internationals. The result was 67 goals in 44 games (including 8 hat tricks) during the 1924–25 season. To this day, no professional has ever amassed more three-goal games in a professional season. Archie actually had 10 hat tricks if you count a pair of three-goal outbursts in the ASL playoffs.
The following year, Archie led Bethlehem Steel to the National Challenge Cup title, netting a hat trick in the finals—a 7–2 win over the club sponsored by Ben Millers Hat Co. in St. Louis. During his time with the Steelworkers, Archie also played twice for the US national team, both times against Canada, scoring 5 times in the two contests.
In 1930, Archie declined to join Team USA for the 1930 World Cup, in Uruguay. It’s one of soccer’s great “what-ifs”—the Americans were impressive in the tournament but lacked the speed and finesse needed to deal with Argentina in the semifinals.
By this point, thanks to Archie and other stars, soccer was actually developing a fan base among professional sports fans in America. There was money to be made in the game—not just by team owners but by overseas players, who were beginning to cross the Atlantic in search of fatter ASL paychecks in the 1920s. Where there is money, however, there is often a struggle for power. And so it was that the ASL and US Football Association, backed by FIFA, began squabbling. As the sport’s premier club, Bethlehem Steel was caught in the middle of the “Soccer War.” It was a war with no winners, as politics and the onset of the Great Depression destroyed the game’s momentum in America for two generations.
Bethlehem Steel dumped its team in 1930 and Archie joined the Newark Americans, playing with the club until the ASL folded in 1933. The league’s records went into a dumpster, so no one knows how many more goals Archie scored in his waning years. In 1933–34, Archie suited up for the Kearny Irish, who won the championship of the re-booted American Soccer League. He shared the ASL scoring title with Razzo Carroll, more than 10 years his junior, who played for his old club, the Kearny Scots.
Archie gave up soccer by the end of the 1930s and attended to his business interests. In 1950, a group of the sport’s old-timers established the National Soccer Hall of Fame. It would not occupy a physical space for another 41 years, but its first class of inductees included Archie and fellow pioneer players Jock Ferguson, Harry Ratican, Billy Gonsalves, Dick Spalding, Sheldon Govier, Millard Lang, Robert Millar and Peter Wilson. Archie lived out his days in Kearny and passed away at 85.