North Cook News

Barry Jacobson's retirement has been pretty busy so far.

Jacobson, a Glenview native and Maine North High School alumnus, retired earlier this year from Downers Grove South High School (DGSHS) after 33 years there as a social worker, according to www.csd99.org. But the work in Illinois soccer goes on for the state's all-time winningest girls' soccer coach, as he continues to work on the state's soccer board and soccer coaches association.

Jacobson was the girls' soccer coach at DGSHS for 29 years and also coached the boys team for 11 years.

“I had an unbelievable opportunity to coach great kids -- great talented kids -- and we had a wonderful program for all those years,” Jacobson told North Cook News.

Jacobson's career in soccer – from playing it in high school and college to coaching and promoting it later on – came about through a recommendation by a coach. Initially, his main sport in his youth was basketball, but he had a coach who wanted his players to play a secondary sport.

“Some of my friends played football, and a couple of us picked soccer, and that's how we started getting into it,” he said.

Jacobson also was familiar with the sport through his older brother, Bob, who was a goalkeeper at Maine East.

Jacobson went on to shine in both basketball and soccer, earning all-conference and all-area honors in both, according to GoForesters.com. That led to playing both sports at Lake Forest College (LFC) when he arrived there in 1977 and continuing his success. His LFC Hall of Fame biography said he had 14 shutouts as a goalkeeper in his career for the Foresters and keyed the team to two Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference championships and an NCAA Tournament berth in 1980. Individually, Jacobson was named to the National Soccer Coaches Association All-Region Team in 1980, the same season he was the team's captain.

From there, he earned his master's in social work and later became head coach at DGSHS.

Jacobson said that when he first started playing soccer, it was not considered a huge sport. That has changed in Illinois.

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, in 1971, Illinois had 27 schools participating in soccer, with 540 players. During the 2015-16 school year, Illinois had 452 high-school boys' soccer programs with 20,704 participants, and 403 girls' programs with 16,286 participants.

Jacobson said soccer's growth has been gradual, with participants warming to the idea of the sport's appeal to youth and constant movement.

“It's a great sport for younger kids, with the hand-eye coordination,” he said. “Getting a lot of kids involved, I think, getting kids moving around ...

kids were able to do a lot more moving around than standing, playing baseball or basketball.”

Jacobson was part of the Illinois High School Association committee that got high school girls soccer started in the early 1980s. He said that effort was “a difficult push” at the beginning, as boys soccer alone was still growing at that point, and girls weren't seen as soccer players at that time.

However, once the sport got picked up at the high school level, it took off quickly, he said.

These days, soccer has evolved to where players are choosing it as their main sport, with the players becoming more skilled and better athletes through more sophisticated training. Jacobson said that while the growth and numbers are “phenomenal” at the youth level, soccer still lags behind sports such as football, baseball and basketball at the high school level in terms of numbers.

“But you're still getting more superior athletes playing it, which is great, both boys and girls,” he said.