Learning soccer on the fields of Central Park and the streets of New York

Photo credit: Indy Eleven/Tim Hankinson

You can take Tim Hankinson out of New York City, but you cannot take the City out of Tim Hankinson.

“The city has always had a warm place in my heart,” Hankinson told NASL.com.

Hankinson, the coach of Indy Eleven, returns to the area where it all began for him – in terms of soccer – when his team faces the New York Cosmos in The Championship Final on Sunday evening, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET.

More than 50 years ago, the Manhattan native who grew up on East 93rd Street between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue got a taste of the world’s game in what he called his own “backyard” – that being Central Park. At five years old, Hankinson started kindergarten at St. David’s School. He was actually mesmerized when a German coach/teacher balanced the ball on his instep against his shin. It is a basic, introductory “drill” for any aspiring soccer player. Cradle the ball, be the ball. Do it again, again, and again.

“Athletically, there wasn’t much,” he said. “The only sport we were playing at the time was soccer. We had a lot of European faculty so we played organized games within the school in Central Park. Every couple of weeks they picked the best players, a kind of school all-star team, and we played against other schools.”

With artistically inclined parents – his father was a pianist, his mother an actress in the early days of TV – Hankinson said they only encouraged him to strive to be the best at whatever he chose to do. “Sports and soccer were what drew me,” he said.

So after school, it was off to the park, “playing on top of broken glass, bottle caps, we all know there were not too many plush spots in Central Park.”

On weekends the games moved outside the park and onto the city’s streets for unsupervised play, dodging traffic, and getting in open play in the time it took the streetlights to change from green to red.

“After I left the [Colorado] Rapids [in 2004] and I spent time in Brazil and I’ve always said that what makes Brazil Brazil isn’t its coaching, it’s beach soccer and futsal. Just as every schoolyard in New York City has a basketball court, they have futsal courts and the kids are playing all the time. I guess that to some extent East 93rd Street was our futsal court.”

Though his attachment to New York and the game in the metropolitan area has waned as he coached in U.S. colleges, MLS, USL, abroad, and in the NASL, Hankinson said his love of the game was enhanced during Pelé’s days with the New York Cosmos during the league’s Legendary Era.

“It was a fascinating time, mostly because of the world stars,” he said. “They weren’t getting them at the end of their career, guys were still in their primes. And they were bigger than life. Every chance I got I would attend and watch.

“There’s an untold, historical story of soccer in New York. The Met Oval, the international makeup in the German-American League, the New York Freedom, the Rough Riders, you’ve had amateur clubs that have had pro players. There was an international world of soccer out at Flushing Meadows Park and I used to go out there to look for players when I coached in college.”

In advance of The Championship Final, Hankinson said he has no plans to revisit some of his old haunts. Now it’s all about a chance to lift the Soccer Bowl Trophy in his first year calling the shots for Indy Eleven.

For Hankinson, New York “is a place of fond memories.”