An interview with men’s soccer coach Bobby Clark

“I always say Notre Dame has a soul,” said Bobby Clark, head coach of the men’s soccer team, in an interview with the Rover.

“We don’t always do the right things, but we try to do the right things,” he continued. “It really is expected of everybody here to do something … for no gain, you know, to help someone or something. I think that’s one of the nice things Notre Dame has.”

Clark believes there was something about the warmth of the community when he first visited that set Notre Dame apart from some of the other places he had been.

“There’s a friendliness in the people who you met,” said Clark. “I feel they welcomed everyone, and I think you still get this here at Notre Dame. … People who work here, work here for a long time, so the school becomes part of them … it’s the same people that are here when I came here, and you know their names. At Stanford, that would be different.”

Clark has been head coach of Fighting Irish men’s soccer team for 15 seasons. His teams have made it to the NCAA tournament in 14 of those seasons, and among other accomplishments, Clark led the Irish to the national title in 2013.

However, his soccer success began not in 2001 as a head coach in South Bend but in Scotland as a young student in the 1950s.

“I played soccer all my life,” said Clark. “I grew up in Glasgow after World War II. Playing soccer was possibly the one thing that was available to all kids. So, I played right through [what] we call primary school—you would call [it] grade school. It’s funny, my high school actually didn’t play soccer; we played rugby, so I played rugby. …But soccer was always my first love.”

His love of the game began to bear real fruit, and before long, Clark found himself on a second division team in Scotland.

“I got picked up by a second division team called Queens Park. … I played there for three years on the first team, and then went to Aberdeen.”

Clark played for the Aberdeen Football Club, a professional soccer team in the Scottish Premiership, for 17 years from 1965-1982, playing soccer in the mornings and working as a physical education teacher in the afternoons.

“I remember when I was signing my contract for Aberdeen,” said Clark. “[M]y mother asked the coach and the administrator that was with him … ‘When do the boys train?’ And he said, ‘Well, they train every morning.’ She said: ‘What do they do in the afternoon?’ He said, ‘Well not really [anything], it’s up to them what they do in the afternoon.’ And my mother said,
‘Well,’ she always called me Robert. She said, ‘Robert’s trained to be a physical education teacher, can he teach in the afternoon?’ and of course when they’re trying to sign you, they say yes … and I did it. So, for 15 years I would teach every afternoon.”

During those years, Clark won several trophies with Aberdeen, including the 1970 Scottish Cup, 1976 League Cup, and 1980 Premier League Championship. Clark also played for the Scotland national football team, serving as Scotland’s backup goalkeeper at the 1978 FIFA World Cup.

Both Clark’s experience as a teacher and the skills he learned from his coaches at Aberdeen helped him to become the coach that he is today.

“I really began to work quite hard at being a coach because a coach is really just another name for a teacher,” he said. “I had a good teaching background … and I played under some wonderful coaches. I mentioned Eddie Turnbull, my first coach … the last coach was Sir Alex Ferguson, who obviously after his tremendous success with Aberdeen … went on to Manchester United and has been arguably the top coach in the world.”

In 1984, Clark received an invitation to help coach a team in Africa, where he officially began his coaching career.

“I ended up taking the job in Zimbabwe in a city called Bulawayo,” he said. “And the name of the team was Highlanders. My whole family, my wife, three children, we all went to Bulawayo and we really had a terrific year. … I think it was a great education for one year.”

Upon his return from Africa, Clark applied for a coaching job at Princeton at the advice of a friend.

“I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what college coaching is about, but it could be interesting,’” said Clark.

He felt that his options back home were either to teach or to go into the game professionally, since he had several offers. But the connection to teaching that a collegiate job would entail was appealing to Clark.

“The professional games are very much about winning,” said Clark. “You’re more worried about your results. Princeton seemed very attractive.”

However, Clark would have to wait until an offer came from Dartmouth to begin coaching college soccer because Princeton gave the job to Bobby Bradley, a friend of Clark’s.

“I spent nine very happy years at Dartmouth. It was a good experience. Both my two oldest children went to Dartmouth.”

After nine years at Dartmouth, Clark took a job in New Zealand as head coach of the New Zealand National Team.

“My wife had always wanted to go to New Zealand … [she] called me up… ‘There’s a job as the National Team coach in New Zealand. Would you be interested in it?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I never really thought about it, but you would like to go … that would be fine’… the long and the short of it, I got the job as the National Team coach.”

Clark worked in New Zealand for two years before moving to Stanford University. His previous athletic director from Dartmouth was working at Stanford at the time, and he offered the coaching job to Clark, who coached the Cardinal for five successful years from 1996-2000.

Finally, in 2001, Notre Dame approached Clark, offering him the job as head coach of the men’s soccer team. Notre Dame had just come off a tough season following the unexpected death of the previous coach, Mike Berticelli, who had been replaced by an interim coach.

“I think it was almost curiosity more than really thinking I was going to come here” Clark said of his initial visit. “I think when I met the people at Notre Dame, I think … [they] really impressed me.”

Clark said there are many obvious comparisons between Notre Dame and Stanford, as both schools excel in athletics and academics. However, his final decision to come to Notre Dame 15 years ago was not as easy for him to describe.

“People always ask me: ‘Why would you leave Stanford? What’s the difference?’ I say, ‘It’s very, very difficult. You just get a feeling.’ … I just got a feeling that this was a good place for me to be, and I think you follow your gut in situations like that.”

For Clark, as for many others, there is something about Notre Dame that is beyond words, something deeper, which makes Notre Dame a place to proudly call home.

James Pratt is a junior majoring in political science and Spanish. Contact him at James.A.Pratt.34@nd.edu.