It all started somewhere back in the late eighties when some Bangladeshi students from UT Austin decided to play soccer at least once or twice a week amid their busy schedules. They were all young kids then and relatively new in the country and chose soccer to create a sense of community as soccer helped them to bring everyone together. As you all know, back then, there was no internet, and it was not easy to make phone calls back home. There were no iPhone, no WhatsApp, no Viber or FB. The students formed a team and called it Team BSA (Bangladesh Students Association). They participated at UT’s Intramural Sports, which had a soccer league then. Some notable first Team players’ were Syed Rahman Rana, Abu Sayed, Mostafiz Rahman Mithu, Hasan Taufique Sohel, Ashif Mahmud Rubel, Khoshru, Tony and others. They used to play at UT’s IF (Intramural Fields) near 45th street.
After they graduated, they continued playing regularly and choose a field in Austin’s Far West area to play soccer from 1994. By that time, many new students and professionals moved to Austin. They mostly played during weekdays, once or twice a week. During 1994’s World Cup time, many of them gathered to watch the game at Quamrul Mina’s place, who himself was a soccer player then. It was right after the final game (between Brazil and Italy) of the World Cup, some of them decided to organize a match between Austin’s (Bangladeshi) Brazil’s Supporters vs Italy’s Supporters. That’s when the idea of getting blue and yellow jerseys first came up. Even now when we ask folks to join for Sunday soccer, we ask them to bring either blue or yellow jerseys to divide the players between the teams by their jersey color.
It was back in June 1997 when the first Austin BD Soccer Tournament took place, hosted by the Bangladesh Students Association (BSA) of UT Austin. It had wide participation by the Bangladeshi Community in all of Austin. Five soccer teams participated in the tournament and the festivity surrounding it and the tournament quality indeed made it a very enjoyable and successful event. The team named Sreshto, managed by Quamrul Mina, won the championship. A total of 55 players participated in that tournament. Each team were owned by two women and a coach-manager was assigned to each team. The tournament was sponsored by Tokyo Autos and Pragma Systems, two business based in Austin. All the games took place at sprawling UT Intramural soccer fields.
Drafting of the players and the way teams were formed was quite interesting. Each team were allocated ten thousand points and they had to use these points judiciously to select the players who were ranked in eleven groups of five players in each level. A minimum of 500 points had to be spent for a player. So, if a team bought a star player with lots of points, they will have fewer points to pick players from other level. Highest bidder for a player got the player. This drafting rule made the teams generally of equal strength.
All the teams participated in that tournament did it with good spirit and sportsmanship. The organizing committee members were Rana, Rubel, Faisal and Zia-Nasser. It was a very well organized tournament and it opened the door for future tournaments in soccer and in other sports.
Some of the prominent players of Austin BD Soccer during 90s era were Abid, Simon, Hero jr, Tuhin, Rubel, Rana, Faisal, Sohel, Saiful Islam, Nasim Uddin, Jami, Hero sr. During that Austin BD team started playing matches against Houston BD and Dallas BD teams.
Austin BD Soccer has been around for a long time, and it will continue to stay for a lot longer. The growth that Austin’s BD community have seen in recent years is phenomenal. Some of the senior players (from 90s era) are still playing, while some joins during the tournament to manage/coach teams. We have a long road ahead of us, but the passion of the players, former players and friends are quite remarkable. The soccer in Austin have gained lots of support from the community and it can do great things to make Austin BD soccer even more successful.
