New Hyde Park resident Tom Lang, who grew up playing in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association (ENYYSA), was one of five people inducted into the Long Island Soccer Player Hall of Fame during the 33rd Annual Long Island Junior Soccer League (LIJSL) Convention at the Huntington Hilton on Saturday, March 7.
“It’s great to come back to Long Island and relive all these great memories,” he stated.
Lang grew up playing for the LIJSL’s New Hyde Park Wildcats and Garden City Centennials. He won the Division 2 national championship with Adelphi in 1973 with the Panthers going 16-2-2 and scoring 101 goals, or more than five goals per game, in the process. His professional resume included playing for the Cosmos, Caribous of Colorado and Atlanta Chiefs of the North American Soccer League and New Jersey Americans of the American Soccer League.
Lang played for Lynbrook Steuben of the Long Island Soccer Football League (LISFL) for 25 years and never received a yellow or red card.
In 1984, Lang coached Lynbrook to the Over-30 national championship. He coached the Hofstra and Fairleigh Dickinson men plus the Adelphi women. For nearly the past two decades,
Lang has been the men’s coach at Southern Connecticut State, where he has won two Division 2 national titles.
“If you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you are among the stars,” said Long Island Soccer Player Hall of Fame Founder Kevin McCrudden. “Tonight, we are among the stars.”
With 123,843 youth soccer players, the non-profit ENYYSA stretches from Montauk Point to the Canadian border. Members are affiliated with 11 leagues throughout the association, which covers the entire state of New York east of Route 81. ENYYSA exists to promote and enhance the game of soccer for children and teenagers between the ages of 5 and 19 years old, and to encourage the healthy development of youth players, coaches, referees and administrators.
All levels of soccer are offered, from intramural, travel team and premier players as well as special children. No child who wants to play soccer is turned away. ENYYSA is a proud member of the United States Soccer Federation and United States Youth Soccer Association. For more information, please log on to http://www.enysoccer.com/, which receives nearly 300,000 hits annually from the growing soccer community.
