There are few people in the nation that have done as much for the sport of soccer as former San Diego Sockers’ head coach, Ron Newman. Born in Farnham, England, Newman’s career began with 13 seasons in the English Football League. He first came to the United States in 1967 to play for the Atlanta Chiefs of the National Professional Soccer League. He played out the 1967 season and won team Most Valuable Player honors, but was traded from Atlanta to the Dallas Tornado midway through 1968. Newman continued his career as a player/coach with Dallas. No one knew it at the time, but as Ron Newman’s days as an athlete dwindled, the time of his greatest contribution to North American soccer grew closer.

Ron Newman began his coaching career by leading the Dallas Tornado from 1969-1975. He enjoyed considerable success with the team, winning “Coach of the Year” honors and leading them to the North American Soccer League (NASL) championship in 1971. After leaving Dallas, Newman spent the next several years coaching the Los Angeles Skyhawks of the American Soccer League (ASL) and the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the NASL. In 1980, however, Newman moved west to San Diego and began his long association with the San Diego Sockers. This move began one of the greatest dynasties in modern sports history, rivaling that of the great New York Yankees teams in baseball, the Green Bay Packers teams in football and the Boston Celtics teams in basketball.

Every year the challenge before Ron Newman and the San Diego Sockers became seemingly more difficult. Each year the experts said it couldn’t be done. But somehow every year Ron Newman proved the naysayers wrong by winning yet another championship. From the 1982 through 1992 seasons, a period of 11 seasons, Ron Newman’s San Diego Sockers indoor team won 10 championships. He accomplished this even though the team switched from the North American Soccer League to the Major Soccer League midway through the period. The only break in Newman’s illustrious streak came with a loss to the Tacoma Stars in the 1986-87 semi-finals. Newman’s record for championships is unmatched in North American soccer history. He won 13 during his career. His overall won-loss record is at a level is seemingly unreachable as well. He retired after the 1999 season with the Kansas City Wizards of the MLS with a record of 753-296-27. No other professional North American soccer coach has reached the 500-win plateau.

As indoor soccer grew and developed during the 1980s, Ron Newman not only guided his team to numerous championships, but developed new positions and popularized strategies that became the basis of the game today. Newman revolutionized the concept of changing lines by situating players on the bench so they could get into position faster. He also invented the “super power play,” by removing the goalkeeper in certain situations in favor of a sixth attacker. His innovative style created the defensive runner position to better utilize the Sockers’ speed on both offensive and defensive counterattacks. The defensive runner position added another dimension to the Sockers’ tactical superiority, and one of the main reasons the team continued to win year-in and year-out, despite the large player turnover, which plagued the team yearly.

Ron Newman won titles with veteran teams and with inexperienced ones, and during his tenure with the Sockers not only won 10 championships, but also dominated the leagues’ record books in both offensive and defensive categories. During the 1988-89 season for example, the Sockers became the first team in league history to lead the league in goals scored (218), fewest goals allowed (168), power-play percentage (31.2%), penalty-killing percentage (78.1%), and home record (17-7).

Ron Newman also won championships in every league he has coached, the sole exception being the most recent, Major League Soccer. He is the only coach to be named “Coach of the Year” and win league championships in the MSL, the NASL Indoor, the NASL Outdoor, and the American Soccer League. He is the only person named “Coach of the Year” twice in the NASL outdoor (1977, 1984), and he is the only San Diegan to be voted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, an honor that was bestowed upon him in 1992.

• Has won 13 professional championships
• Only coach to win championships and Coach of the Year honors in four different leagues (NASL outdoors, NASL indoors, MISL and ASL)
• Earned two indoor Coach of the Year awards with San Diego
• Inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in 1992
• Inducted into the San Diego Sockers Hall of Fame in 1993
• Inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame in 1997
• Reached the 750 win plateau on 7/19/98
• Chosen as the most influential person in San Diego Soccer in 1999
• Finished with an all-time record of 753-296-27 (includes indoors, outdoors, regular season and playoffs)
• Inducted into the Breitbard Hall of Fame in 2003

During a 20-year major league career, all of it patrolling the outfield for the Padres, Tony Gwynn posted some staggering numbers and miscellaneous honors. There was the .338 career batting average, the eight National League batting titles, the 3,000 hits, the five Gold Gloves for fielding excellence and the 16 All-Star Game appearances, among other various and sundry accolades. You can make book on a 2007 Hall of Fame selection.

It was the Gold Gloves awards that Tony most cherished, as he was not a polished outfielder early in his career, and devoted long hours to honing those skills. A real perfectionist, he also spent countless hours examining videotape of his plate appearances, looking for slight flaws to be corrected. He was the prototypical contact hitter, rarely striking out and spraying the ball to all fields although professing a special fondness for the “5.5 hole” between short and third. Tony met Ted Williams for the first time in 1992, and the two stars spent many hours together discussing hitting techniques. Tony’s power production improved somewhat following Ted’s suggestion of hitting inside pitches, but he had long since reasoned that he would be more helpful to his club by hitting for average.

Tony was a highly-sought prep prospect out of Long Beach Poly High. He chose to attend San Diego State when the Aztecs were the only school to allow him to play both baseball and basketball. He became a well-regarded point guard at SDSU, still holds the all-time school record for career assists, and was a tenth round draft choice of the NBA’s then-San Diego Clippers.

Although Tony retired following the 2000 season when slowed by knee and foot miseries, local baseball fans still have the opportunity to follow his career as he assumed San Diego State head baseball coach duties in 2002. The stadium at SDSU, funded by John Moores and named for Tony, is one of the finest college fields in the nation. Be assured that he’ll still lighting up the field with his high-pitched giggle and will always be available for an autograph or media moment.

By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions

Chargers defensive tackle Gary “Big Hands” Johnson is the 11th member of the Air Coryell Chargers to be inducted in the Breitbard Hall of Fame. He may not be the last, either.

But it doesn’t matter to Johnson when or where he falls among that group of players that played under head coach Don Coryell while winning three straight AFC West titles from 1979 to 1981 and advanced to a fourth playoff trip as a Wild-Card team in 1982.

“Anytime you get inducted into a Hall of Fame, it’s the right time,” Johnson said. “It’s special to be named to any Hall of Fame, and I’m honored.”

Johnson, a four-time Pro Bowler who played for the Chargers from 1975-84 and still holds the franchise record with 17.5 sacks set in 1980, has plenty of experience at being inducted into a Hall of Fame.

In addition to being named to the Chargers Hall of Fame in 1999, he has previously entered Halls of Fame for the State of Louisiana, Grambling State University, the Southwest Athletic Conference and his hometown region of Shreveport and Bossier City in Louisiana.

The other Air Coryell era Breitbard Hall-of-Famers he joins tonight are wide receiver Charlie Joiner (1986), head coach Don Coryell (1987), quarterback Dan Fouts (1989), offensive lineman Ed White (1991), cornerback Willie Buchanon (1994), tight end Kellen Winslow (1995), kicker Rolf Benirschke (1999), offensive tackle Russ Washington (2002), offensive guard Doug Wilkerson (2005) and defensive tackle Louie Kelcher (2006).

“Coach Coryell knew how to get your blood flowing,” Johnson said. “We went from being a turtle to a hare when he took over our team (in 1978). You had so much energy when you were coming out of the locker room, you were exploding. Coach Coryell could get that out of you.”

Johnson returned from San Diego to his Louisiana roots in 1995 and now works at the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel in Bossier City.

If you love reminiscing about the Air Coryell Chargers and some day you’re traveling through northern Louisiana, be sure to stop in at the Horseshoe and ask for “Big Hands.” Johnson’s job as an executive host at the Horseshoe is greeting people and talking sports.

“This year, all people wanted to talk about down here are the Chargers and LaDainian Tomlinson,” Johnson said. “They love LaDainian Tomlinson. He’s Superman.”

In fact, Johnson talks so much Chargers football — and football in general — he jokes that his wife declared a ban on talking and watching football when he’s home from work.

“All those years of playing football, and now I talk football with fans,” Johnson said. “I love it. We talk about the Chargers, the NFL, college — anything.”

Johnson ran a business in San Diego in his early retirement years before he returned home. That was two decades after he arrived in San Diego as a first-round draft pick in 1975 out of Grambling State.

The Chargers’ 1975 draft class turned around the franchise similar to how the 2004 class turned the Bolts into champions of multiple AFC West titles.

After Johnson was drafted with the eighth pick of the first round out, others that followed were cornerback Mike Williams (first round, 22nd pick), defensive tackle Louie Kelcher (second round, 30th), defensive end Fred Dean (second round, 33rd), safety Mike Fuller (third round, 73rd), offensive tackle Billy Shields (sixth round, 136th), running back Rickey Young (seventh round, 164th) and offensive lineman Ralph Perretta (eighth round, 206th).

“What was special about my time with the Chargers is so many of us came in at the same time, and we started from scratch,” Johnson said. “When I first got there, we were the pits. We were 2-12 in 1975. But all of those guys grew and matured together. We matured into a dominant force. I loved lining up in the defensive line next to Louie, Fred, Leroy (Jones), Wilber Young and DJ (Charles DeJurnett).”

Of the Air Coryell Chargers, Johnson agrees with many of teammates when he says the 1979 team was the best of the four playoff teams.

“That should have been our first Super Bowl,” he said.

The 1979 season was the year the Chargers romped in the regular season over the Los Angeles Rams, 40-16, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, 35-7. The Steelers later beat the Rams in the Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl. But the Chargers were upset in the first round of the playoffs at home by the Houston Oilers, 17-14.

“That’s the biggest regret of my career,” Johnson said. “We had the talent, but we never had that edge to go all the way. I don’t know why. You might only get one good chance to get to the Super Bowl, and you’ve got to take advantage of it.”

Johnson was later traded to the San Francisco 49ers when he didn’t fit the team’s shift to a 3-4 scheme, and as fate would have it, he won a Super Bowl with the 49ers that season in the twilight of his career.

“Where’s my ring, is the question I get asked the most,” Johnson said. “I don’t wear it often. I save it for special occasions. That’s something I cherish.”