By Julie Shapiro
Bill Bialosky, the new head of Downtown Soccer League, ties a player’s shoe during a game last season.
For a reminder of why he is ending his term as president of Downtown Soccer League, all Don Schuck has to do is look up.
“My youngest son is now 15 and taller than me,” Schuck said. “I think it’s time somebody with younger children gets to enjoy what I got to enjoy.”
After seven years as D.S.L. president, Schuck, 55, stepped down earlier this month. Bill Bialosky, a coach for the past six years, took over.
“[Schuck] was instrumental to this league happening,” Bialosky said, “to it becoming as big and successful as it is.”
As Bialosky steps into Schuck’s cleats, he and the other officers have to chop up the work Schuck did and assign it to multiple people. “We wonder how he did all of it,” Bialosky said.
Schuck loves sports but he had never played soccer until he started coaching at the league 13 years ago, when his older son was 6. Both of his sons, now 19 and 15, played in Downtown Soccer League and later for their high school teams.
“You get to watch them grow up,” Schuck said. “It’s been wonderful.”
After spending years juggling his career as a lawyer with his duties at the soccer league, Schuck will now devote his full attention to growing his law firm, Bronstein, Van Veen & Schuck.
Schuck’s strongest memories of the league are from the very beginning of his presidency, the fall 2001 season. The games started shortly after 9/11, when Downtown families were scattered throughout Manhattan and beyond, and some were still searching for places to live. The Battery Park City ballfields became a staging area for the World Trade Center recovery and cleanup, so Downtown Soccer League moved up to Chelsea Waterside Park.
On Saturday afternoons, families came to Chelsea from Brooklyn, Westchester and New Jersey. People who had been neighbors in Lower Manhattan reunited to share information and to play soccer.
“It helped bring the community back together,” Schuck said. “And it was fun.”
Back then, the league numbered 300 kids. Last season 850 signed up, and this year the roster could top 1,000.
As the league grows, the biggest issue for the future is field space, Bialosky said. The league prides itself on accepting all players, without making cuts, but the space constraints mean that Bialosky has to get stricter about limiting enrollment to kids who live below Canal St.
Bialosky, 48, started coaching for Downtown Soccer League nearly six years ago — almost against his will. When his wife signed their oldest son up for the league, she decided to sign her husband up as well, as a coach. Bialosky protested. He was overextended already, with his Tribeca/Soho architecture firm and volunteer work in building community structures in Vermont.
But Schuck told Bialosky to give coaching a try, and Bialosky haltingly agreed.
“It only took one practice with the kids to realize that it was far more fun than anything else I could do,” said Bialosky, whose sons are 10 and 8.
For both Schuck and Bialosky, the most important lesson Downtown Soccer League teaches is teamwork.
Kids will have plenty of time to worry about scores, statistics and competition, Schuck said. At Downtown Soccer League, he wants them to learn how to be a good sport and how to work together.
“When I was a kid, there wasn’t an opportunity, unless you were very good, to play sports,” Schuck said. “Everybody has that opportunity at Downtown Soccer League, and I think that is a great thing.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
