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Westmeath’s Collins named toU.S soccer Hall of Fame

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Jay Mwamba

Long-time Long Island Junior Soccer League President Peter Collins was inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame, along with German legend Franz Beckenbauer, in upstate Oneonta last Tuesday.

Collins, who’s 67, was enshrined in the pantheon of American soccer for his contributions to the game, particularly on Long Island. The tireless proponent of the game, who came to the United States in 1957, ended his acceptance speech with a rousing rendition of “God Bless America.”

Beckenbauer, the World Cup winning skipper and manager who spent the twilight of his career with the now-defunct New York Cosmos in the late ’70s, was inducted in absentia.

“We’re very proud to have [Collins] as one of our newest hall of famers,” National Hall of Fame President Will Lunn said after the

ceremony. “His contributions to soccer have been very significant and huge, in Long Island specifically.”

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For Collins, who retired from the Long Island Light Company in 1993 after 30 years to dedicate his life to youth soccer, his recognition by the Hall of Fame caps an ecstatic period in his life.

“I’m getting into the Hall of Fame and we have peace in Ireland. What more can you want?” he remarked before making the trip to Oneonta. “Now if we had one Irish [national] team, imagine how strong we could be.”

Born in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, Collins was an all-around athlete in his school days, playing soccer, rugby and participating in track and field events. But he stuck with soccer, which he said he was “fairly good” at.

He turned out for amateur sides West Port United in County Mayo and Dublin’s Southgate United before following his girlfriend Stateside.

Collins landed in Philadelphia briefly before relocating to New York City, where he played for Malta United in Astoria, Queens, and the Glen Cove reserves in Long Island, where he would make his home.

He was a successful youth coach in Hicksville for many years. Collins led the best of his teams, the Hicksville-Americans, to the Under-19 National Championship final in 1979 and 1980, but they came up short on both occasions in their quest for the Maguire Cup.

“I haven’t coached since then,” said the hall of famer, whose son Michael played on both losing teams.

Collins turned to administration and joined the Long Island Junior Soccer League as a board member before being elected president.

Encompassing clubs in Nassau, Suffolk and parts of Queens, the league has grown tremendously under Collins’s tenure, a fact he attributes to the lingering impact of World Cup ’94, hosted by the U.S., and the huge army of volunteers that help him run the organization.

From 200 traveling teams – for ages 10 to 19 – when he started with the league, LIJSL now boasts of more than 1,200 teams and some 40,000 intramural players.

“There was a 20 percent jump in registration after the 1994 World Cup, and I have some 600 to 700 awfully good volunteers who help me administer the league. I’m very lucky to have such dedicated people,” Collins said.

He can include himself among the LIJSL faithful after deciding to spend his retirement years furthering youth soccer. “I like it. I enjoy it,” he said simply.

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