One hundred years ago almost to the day — on April 11, 1924 — dreamers of a new life in America who sought to use sport to bond as they adjusted to the future, while staying connected to the past, formed the Edelweiss soccer club in Dayton.
They named it after the rugged, but beautiful white mountain flower found in the Alpine region of their native Germany.
The team was made up of German immigrants and for a long time it was the best amateur club in the area. It certainly has been the most long-lasting, so much so that it’s considered the home of area soccer.
As you come to the end of E. Wenger Road in Englewood and enter the historic 10-acre Edelweiss complex, the sign that greets you makes that point:
German Club Edelweiss
Origin of Soccer in Dayton
1924
Saturday the German Club Edelweiss is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a schnitzel and German potato salad dinner, followed by a short program and a dance featuring the Ed Klimczak Band.
Dinner is at 6 and it’s free for members and $15 for non-members. The dance is $5 for members, $7 for non-members. The club is at 531 E. Wenger Road. For questions, call 937-479-1719 or visit the website: germanclubedelweiss.com.
On April 17, the Edelweiss Over-40 team will play a home league game on the famed field just beyond the clubhouse.
Formed when young Germans left the music-oriented Eintracht German Singing Society on Troy Street to form a sports club, Edelweiss was meant to preserve and promote German heritage, but in the process, it also planted the seeds for the growth of soccer in the Dayton area.
In 1932 the team acquired the land along the Stillwater River that the club is on now. Along with a soccer pitch, there was a running track that hosted track and field events.
Soccer was the main focus though and while the club not only helped launch the Dayton Amateur Soccer League, it also promoted youth soccer through clinics and held Saturday matches for high school club teams which led to soccer being made a varsity sport by the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
In the early 1950s, the Edelweiss men’s team played in a tri-state league — encompassing southern Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky — that was created by a former club member.
The Edelweiss team was good enough that it played the U.S .Olympic team in Cincinnati in the 1970s and often hosted German teams visiting the U.S.
In turn, the Edelweiss team toured Germany and won a five-game series.
Today the clubhouse, which also includes an impressive ballroom, is filled with trophies, team photos and framed jerseys, especially the club’s traditional blue and white tops.
Over the past century, thousands of soccer players have been drawn to the complex.
Two men with some of the deepest ties are 83-year-old Dieter Kraft and 53-year-old John Boucuvalas.
Dieter and his twin brother Herman came with their parents and two sisters from Germany in 1954 and lived on a farm outside of Trotwood. They soon found the Edelweiss club and over the past 70 years Dieter has been a player there, a longtime coach, and now serves as president of the club.
Boucuvalas — whose late father was Greek and his mother is from England — grew up on nearby Bonnycastle Avenue and began coming to the club as a kid.
“It was easy,” he said with a smile. “I could ride my bike and I didn’t even have to pedal. It was downhill.”
He attended youth clinics and later played on the men’s team that Dieter coached.
He starred on the Northmont High School team that won the state title in 1988, then played at the University of Dayton — coached by Roy Craig who also played on the Edelweiss team — and made the MCC’s All-Newcomers team.
Later he was the head coach at Northmont and Fairmont and now helps coach the club’s Over-40 team.
He also owns and operates Dayton Outdoor Weddings that uses both the Edelweiss and Eintracht clubs as a venue. The income helps keep the two clubs financially afloat at a time when membership is aging and social clubs across the Miami Valley have seen membership numbers drop.
Long tied to the local soccer scene — and with two sons who went from Oakwood High to college soccer: Billy is at Carnegie Mellon; Charlie at Wittenberg — Boucuvalas said it’s important for everyone to “remember where all this got started.
“Edelweiss is a traditional place, a true soccer club. Here in America, we call teams soccer clubs, but they’re only that in name. There’s no clubhouse, no social scene tied to it. It’s just a team.
“But here soccer was a social event. It had a real community feel.”
The “new” clubhouse — built solely by members — replaced the original clubhouse in 1974. The old locker room — reminiscent of the Dayton Triangles locker room that was preserved at Carillon Park — still stands and you can still see the lockers and showers in it.
There once were cabins along the river and the visiting German teams stayed in them. And some of the benches that once ringed the soccer field now offer seating for wedding guests.
‘An adventure’
Dieter grew up on a small farm outside Diespeck, a Bavarian village some 30 kilometers west of Nuremberg.
He said his father started a local soccer team there when he just 19 and then worked as a wheelwright — repairing wooden wheels on farm equipment — until he was drafted into the German Army before World War II.
He eventually was captured by the Russians and spent five years as a prisoner of war.
“When he finally came home, the wheelwright business went downhill,” Dieter said. “Everything had turned to rubber tires and iron wheels.”
Life was a struggle and his mother’s two brothers — who lived on a farm between Trotwood and Brookville — invited them to come to America and help with the work.
“My brother and I were 13 ½ when we came here in May of ‘54 and I looked at it as an adventure,” said Dieter, who spoke no English at the time.
“In the fall we started high school,” he said. “That first day the bus never showed up, so my brother and I got on one bicycle and rode three miles to school.
“When we got there, kids were running all over the halls, heading to classrooms. We spoke no English and didn’t know where to go. Finally, when all the kids were in class, we were still wandering around lost.
“My brother had a dictionary and when somebody said something, he’d try to look it up. But by the time he found it, the conversation had moved on.
“But each year it got a little easier.”
The Edelweiss club, like the other two German clubs in town — Eintracht and Liederkranz-Turner on East Fifth Street which is Dayton’s oldest German organization — was a refuge for immigrants. It offered a sense of security; a social gathering spot; and a sports outlet where the Kraft brothers and so many others like them could excel.
Dieter — who still works as a plumber — has always been fully committed to the Edelweiss club. Over the years he’s done everything from wash the team uniforms to now mowing the field.
‘I learned a ton’
“I was from the generation that just started to come up with club soccer,” Boucuvalas said. “But it became this expensive thing when you joined a travelling team.
“Instead, I could play with these older guys at Edelweiss and it was a lot cheaper. It might cost me just $20, but I learned a ton. And through it I was able to meet my college coach who saw me play here.
“There’s a big difference mentality-wise between the way older guys played and people my age. I think it absolutely helped me. I felt I was able to hit the ground running as a college player.”
After UD, he played briefly with the Dayton Dynamo and then for years with the men’s open team at Edelweiss. He’s now with the Over-40 team, which these days has some Vietnamese players, but no fulltime German-born player.
For a long time he taught in high school and at Sinclair and now is a communications instructor at the International School of Broadcasting.
He’s the business manager for Edelweiss and his primary work is his wedding business, which he said includes about 40 marriage ceremonies a year at both Edelweiss and Eintracht.
And while Edelweiss now works its magic on loving couples, it continues to rekindle dreams for those who are aging and have the challenges that come with it.
At 83, Herman Kraft still puts on his cleats and sometimes joins the team. Although still fit physically, he’s been dealing with memory lapses that make certain daily tasks difficult.
And yet there he was just a few years ago, called in to take a penalty kick against an opposing goalie a few decades younger.
He didn’t hesitate. He took the kick and he scored.
As Boucuvalas told the story, Dieter smiled.
Once again, the Brothers Kraft had discovered the power of the real Field of Dreams.
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