1951 Soccer Bowl
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| Date | January 1, 1951 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venue | Sportsman's Park[1], St. Louis, Missouri | ||||||
| Referee | Paul Garcia | ||||||
| Attendance | 1,673[2] | ||||||
| Weather | Fair and 47 °F (8 °C)[3] | ||||||
The 1951 Soccer Bowl was the second edition of the Soccer Bowl, the post-season college soccer championship game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Purdue held on January 1, 1951, at the Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, Missouri. The match ended in a 3–1 victory with Penn State claiming their second Soccer Bowl, and their 11th claimed national men's soccer championship. The game was used to determine the champion of the 1950 ISFA season, which predated the NCAA as the premier organizing body of collegiate soccer, and represented the concluding game of the season for both teams.
The match originally was going to feature Penn State playing the San Francisco Dons soccer team in the final, but the Dons were unable to make the trip to St. Louis, causing Purdue to serve as an alternate.[4]
Historically, Penn State had been heralded as one of the top college soccer programs in the United States from the late 1920s into the late 1940s. From 1926 until 1950 head coach Bill Jeffrey had the Penn State program accumulate a record of 138–20–24.[5]
Unlike Penn State, Purdue's men's soccer team was not a varsity team sponsored by the university, but a club team sponsored by the Purdue University students. Since at the time the NCAA did not sanction the sport, the ISFA permitted varsity and club teams to compete against each other.[5]
