The voice of USF Athletics, Jim Louk, will routinely put down his radio headset and pick up the pen to share his perspective on the history of USF Athletics.

Louk has been broadcasting games for 27 years and is the resident historian in the Athletics Department hallways so this week he talks to Hall of Fame inductee Dan Holcomb.

A Visit with Dan Holcomb

Soccer is USF's first sport

Throughout these writings we've had a chance to go back in time to re-visit important dates, games or events in USF history. We've also had a chance to meet some of the people who carved out the foundation of USF Athletics. Today, as we continue our profiles of the 2010 USF Athletics Hall of Fame class, we'll go back to the absolute advent of the Bulls Athletics program to meet the first coach ever hired at USF.

Dan Holcomb was a native of the midwest who was hired at USF to begin the soccer program. He coached the first true intercollegiate game at USF (a soccer match in October, 1965) and in the years prior to the beginning of the Tampa Bay Rowdies run he may have been the most visible and well known soccer expert in the entire Tampa Bay area.

As you might expect, the first ever NCAA coach had to build from the ground up. His first players came from responses to an Oracle ad placed in the summer of 1965.

“I was given $3,800 budget for the first year,” Holcomb recently recalled. “We couldn't travel much. We went by private car to in-state games and rarely went out of state.”

Recruiting was done by letter and telephone only. Matches were played on the USF intramural fields, with portable goals and no seats for fans.

Coach Dan Holcomb

By his second season in 1966, he had the budget to return to his native Missouri and pull seven players out of the St. Louis area, a fertile soccer recruiting ground. That core helped build the foundation to 22 years of coaching without a losing season.

Still, it was a much different world then at USF Athletics, a world where head coaches didn't have 12 month contracts. “It was like being a school teacher; you worked for nine months and then had to go find a summer job.” For years, Holcomb's summers were spent working at a boys camp in Fryeburg, Maine.

Tampa Bay's soccer scene changed in the 1970s with the creation of the Tampa Bay Rowdies franchise. “Then youth programs started to thrive,” says Holcomb. “I always made sure our guys were community oriented."

From clinics to Special Olympics, Holcomb's USF soccer players were a visible part of the Tampa Bay community throughout the '70s and '80s.

First soccer game at USF

The years went on, and Holcomb adjusted to the changes. Facilities improved. The Bulls joined the Sun Belt Conference. Budgets became at least workable. And Dan Holcomb kept winning.

USF soccer teams were a model of consistency, which Holcomb says was primarily due to defense.

“I was always defensive minded. I always made sure I had a good goalkeeper and four good defenders.”

“He did a great job of recruiting,” recalls former player Fred Sikorski. “He put together a great team year in and year out. Dan was an intense coach and he fielded very physically fit teams.”

Sun Belt Conference Champions

Among the many great Bulls he remembers are Fergus Hopper, a native of Ireland and three time All American, and Roy Wegerle, who played for the U.S. National team and was a two time All-American.

By the time his USF days ended in 1986, Holcomb had taken his team to six NCAA Tournaments in 22 seasons. He won eight Sun Belt Conference championships. While his overall record of 216-87-22 is impressive, his post season mark of 24-7-4 is close to astounding. He remains atop the all-time wins list for USF soccer coaches, and he says he takes pride in the continued success of the program under George Kiefer.

First soccer team at USF

“I've always been proud of all the USF sports, but I always felt we set the tone in men's soccer with the first win at the start of the athletics program. Often, as soccer goes, so goes the athletics program.”

Looking back, his satisfaction is drawn from the young men he coached. “It's all about the players who came here, got a degree, and are now very, very successful.”

Dan Holcomb will be inducted in to the second class of the USF Athletics Hall of Fame with Sherry Bedingfield, Kerine Black, Ross Gload and Joe Lewkowicz on December 3, 2010.

GO BULLS!