March 11 (1900)

The Cycling Club, one of the top teams in St. Louis at the turn of the century, wages a memorable battle with the West Ends and wins, 5-3, in an Association Football League game at Athletic Park, Garrison and North Market streets. “Nothing but praise can be written about either team,” according to an anonymous correspondent in the next day’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Cycling Club features future U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Benny Govier and former Welsh international Dick Jarrett, both residents of Chicago and part of the largely imported roster for the Cycling Club. (Jarrett will settle permanently in St. Louis.) Govier and Jarrett score against the West Ends, and “appeared never to tire . . . their work was fast from start to finish,” the Post-Dispatch writes. The West Ends, comprised of local players, will go on to win the 1899-1900 Association Football League championship. Govier, a center halfback, will be “considered as the best player in American soccer in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th,” according to the Society for American Soccer History’s website.