Leaning back against a wall of plaques and team pictures which will soon hang in the head coaching offices of New Zealand's national soccer team, Bobby Clark, the resigning head coach of the men's soccer team, appeared satisfied with his nine years of work at the College.
In a distinctive accent he picked up somewhere between Glasgow and Aberdeen, Clark recalled how nine years ago some friends advised him not to accept the head coaching position at Dartmouth. "When I came here, I don't think anyone believed we could win an Ivy League title," he said. "Now if we don't win an Ivy League title we look at it as a bad season."
As he prepares to move to New Zealand where he will coach both the World Cup and Olympic soccer teams, he finds a similar attitude greeting his arrival. "I spoke to a newspaper man in New Zealand yesterday, and he asked me, 'Do you think you can make this team a success?'" Clark said. "I asked him, 'Do you think a success can be made of the team?'"
Clark has made a career of being successful in places far away from home. He was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, where he played soccer in school. He went on to join the premier division team in rival Aberdeen, a move he describes as going from "San Francisco to Boston."
The competition between Glasgow and Aberdeen never affected Clark much, and he went on to star in goal for Aberdeen for 17 seasons. He made the national team all 17 years. In 1980, he minded the net for the team which won the league championship.
Clark's departure from a playing career led him into coaching and moved him from Scotland to Africa, where he coached a Zimbabwe football club. His coaching was influenced most by his first coach at Aberdeen, Eddie Turnbull, a man who Clark describes as having a natural feel for the game. "Stuff that you can't learn from books," he said, "is what I learned from Eddie Turnbull."
Clark also draws some of his philosophies from interaction with other Dartmouth coaches. "Kids are kids, and the game's the game," he said, "and a large part of it is how you handle them."
In his nine seasons here, Clark's record is 82-42-13, the best of any coach in the history of Dartmouth men's soccer. He led Dartmouth to three Ivy League titles, in 1988, 1990 and 1992, and two NCAA appearances.
Clark said that in nine years at Dartmouth he never once applied for another job. "My wife called me while I was at Penn State with the U.S. Junior Team, and she asked if she could send in my resume for the New Zealand job," he explained. "My wife is a big fan of New Zealand and I felt it was a shot in the dark, and I said, 'Why not?' and she sent it in."
Clark clearly feels very much at home at Dartmouth, and in some ways perhaps the rolling moors of Hanover remind him of his native Scotish countryside.
"I always felt Dartmouth was an easy place to sell," he said, "Some coaches have to sell colleges the way that some salesmen have to sell cheap blends of malt whiskey manufactured in other countries - but Dartmouth was like selling a brand of good 10 year old Scotish malt whiskey."
