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Published: 7/26/2012 | Updated: 6/17/2013
By DON O'BRIEN
Herald-Whig Sports Editor
Jack Mackenzie sees the seemingly constant turnover in college athletic programs and shakes his head. In a coaching career that spanned parts of six decades at Quincy University, the Hawks' long-time men's soccer coach never thought about taking flight for greener pastures. "Times have changed," said Mackenzie, who announced his retirement Wednesday after 43 seasons in charge of the men's soccer program. "I had a wife and two kids. I worked. This was a job that I came to do, to teach and coach. I wasn't one of these ones who thought, â I could do two or three years here and then I could go there.' "I just wanted to go to a place where I could teach and coach, and I could raise my family." He arrived in Quincy in 1969, a bespeckled 28-year-old with six years of experience coaching at Augustinian Academy in St. Louis. He had a wife and two young sons, the youngest of which made the trip from St. Louis to Quincy riding on top of a laundry basket full of towels. He didn't get paid to coach soccer then. Instead he received time off of his duties teaching physical education to coach the team. He handed over the keys to the program to long-time assistant coach Mike Carpenter on Wednesday morning as a 71-year-old with more than 500 victories, including nine national championships. More important to Mackenzie was that fact that his home team had grown to six children, 10 grandchildren and a 50-year marriage to his wife, Sharon, during his tenure as the Hawks' soccer boss. "The most important thing is celebrating my 50th wedding anniversary with my wife and seeing how my children turned out," he said. "That trumps any victory." To Mackenzie, nothing trumped Quincy University either. As one of the most-respected soccer coaches in the nation, Mackenzie had his suitors over the years. In reflecting on his career, he remembered one particular instance where someone tried to point him in a different direction. "I had an opportunity years ago to maybe get in on the ground floor at the University of Notre Dame. I didn't even look into it," he said. "Notre Dame was a club team, and their coach used to come to our national championship and try to learn from the Hawks. He was their varsity coach for a couple of years, but he was a lawyer and he had to go practice law. Somebody said, â I think you could get that job.' I didn't want the Notre Dame job. Quincy College was a heck of a lot better job than Notre Dame. Why in the heck would I have wanted to go do Notre Dame? "I really thought -- and I still think -- this is the best college soccer coaching job in the country." Mackenzie made it the best college soccer coaching job in the country. His teams not only were the best in the land, they were loved by the Gem City. To wear the Quincy College soccer blazer in the 1970s and 80s was an honor. Those national championship teams helped put Quincy on the map. They traveled the world, spreading the news of Quincy soccer. Mackenzie's Hawks teams made eight foreign tours, starting with a trip to Israel in 1971 and ending with a jaunt to Quincy's sister city in Herford, Germany, in 2008. Mackenzie gave everything he had to the program. He simply ran out of gas. "The last couple of years the passion, because of health and age, just hasn't been quite there," he said. "I think the fairest thing for the program is to get new vibrant blood in there. I've been thinking about this for the last two or three years, but last season it was to the point where I knew it had to come." And with Mackenzie's retirement ends an era at QU. They just don't make coaches like Mackenzie any more. The ideals of loyalty and respect that Mackenzie instilled in all of his teams are in short supply in our major college sports. It's a scene where coaches tell recruits they'll be there for them for four years only to negotiate a bigger deal with a new school a week later, leaving the school and the player in a bind for his own advancement. QU soccer players never had to worry about that. Mackenzie was always there for them because he believed he hit the lottery with his first college coaching job, one he landed on March 22, 1969. The rest was history, and a run that we'll likely never seen again. -- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365
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