A Chicago sports legend still soaring after receiving lifetime achievement award
There’s no sense of urgency in Willy Roy’s voice. He prefers to remain on Cloud 9 a little longer.
And why not? Roy, a longtime Bensenville resident and one of the few living legends of Chicago soccer, received the Walt Chyzowych Lifetime Achievement Award on Jan. 11 at the United Soccer Coaches convention at McCormick Place. What a weekend it was for the 81-year-old who brought NASL championships to Chicago as the Sting coach in 1981 and 1984.
“It came a little bit as a surprise, but you know what? It’s a tremendous honor, obviously,” Roy said. “It blew my mind.”
When thinking of Chicago soccer, Roy’s is one of the first names to come to mind, right along with Sting owner Lee Stern and former Sting and Fire player and former Fire coach Frank Klopas.
“To see some of my teammates that I played with, you know, when I was playing with the local teams, and then of course coaching the college teams, some of my players showed up. And then a couple of my professional players from when I coached the Chicago Sting showed up. I mean everything was just overwhelming,” Roy said.
Born in Germany during World War II, Roy didn’t grow up playing soccer.
“My dad was totally anti-sport. You have to kind of realize, this was right after the war. I was born in ’43, the war was over in ’45,” he said. “I took my Sunday shoes and I nailed some cleats under my shoes, and my dad found out and I’ll tell you, even my lederhosen didn’t cut out all the pain that I got from my dad.”
The family emigrated to the United States when Roy was 13 and settled in the Chicago area. Ironically, the soccer legend won a team state wrestling championship at Reavis High School, then wrestled in college at Illinois.
He returned to soccer after college and made his way to the U.S. national team and some local soccer clubs, eventually joining the Sting as a player. Roy scored 9 goals in 20 games for the national team. He was inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in 1989 as a player.
“The first time I put on the jersey, with the big USA on the front of the chest, it was such an honor, I didn’t even know,” said Roy, yet another story flowing easily in a voice still strong and a German accent still thick. “I was kind of lucky. I guess I had a nose for scoring goals and that’s how I got on the national team. … I was just in awe.”
But Roy is best known around here as the Sting coach, and his club brought two championships to the city during a time when Chicago pro sports was going through a long dry spell.
“We were the thing in Chicago. When we flew back from Toronto in our ’81 championship season, they had to delay our flight because they said, ‘You know what, there are several thousand people that are going to be at O’Hare, so we have to get more security,’” Roy said. “ … It was unbelievable.”
The team was told not to stop while walking after winning the league championship in Toronto, just keep walking through the small lane that was formed. A few hours later, after he got home, he got a phone call from his mother.
“’What kind of son are you?’” Roy said. “And I said, Mom, what do you mean? ‘I was standing there in the line with your brother and you didn’t even say hi to me.’ I had to explain to my mom what actually happened.”
The city held a ticker-tape parade downtown for the team, and for a short while soccer was the big sport in Chicago.
“Chicago was really, really behind the Chicago Sting,” Roy said. “ … There are so many wonderful stories I could tell you. A great time in my life, my family’s life, especially my sons because they were at an age where they came to all the home games, the championship game in Toronto, so they had a chance to live that side of the story from their dad.”
After leaving the Sting, Roy coached his three sons — Willy Jr., Karsten and Markus — at Northern Illinois. He planned to coach just a season, bridging a gap until the school could find a permanent coach. He stayed 16 years and the Roy family is in the NIU Athletics Hall of Fame.
“It really was (special), and the good thing is they still talk to me,” Roy joked.
Daily Herald Sports Editor Orrin Schwarz can be reached at oschwarz@dailyherald.com.