Just three days after Glen Cove Junior Soccer League co-founder Marco Malusa passed away, the Long Island soccer community is still in mourning as Oceanside United co-founder Ian McDougall died at the age of 92 on October 11.
McDougall co-founded the Oceanside United Soccer Club in 1962 and adopted Nassau County’s colors of blue and orange as Oceanside was the first soccer club in Nassau. Oceanside United teams started playing in the German-American Junior Soccer League, now the Cosmopolitan Junior Soccer League (CJSL).
On that first boys team in 1962 was McDougall’s son Alan McDougall as well as Rudy Lamonica, who starred in an indoor tourney hosted by Oceanside United in the winters of 1968 and ’69. After Lamonica’s tragic passing of bone cancer in 1970, the tournament was named after him and today, the Rudy Lamonica Indoor Tournament is the oldest indoor youth soccer tournament in the United States.
The Long Island Junior Soccer League (LIJSL) kicked off play in 1966 and as neighboring towns followed Oceanside’s lead and started soccer clubs, Oceanside United moved its travel teams to the LIJSL in the early 1980s.
The club slogan of “From tiny acorns, mighty oaks can grow“ is very appropriate as two dozen Oceanside United alumni have played professional soccer.
McDougall coached Oceanside United teams for four decades up to 2003 and served as club president in the 1980s. For all this volunteering, he was inducted into the LIJSL Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Eastern New York Hall of Fame in 2007.
A native of Hamilton, Scotland, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1947. McDougall was a member of the Clydesdale Amateurs squad that won the Lanarkshire League and John Roan Cup in 1946. He also played for the St. John’s Grammar and Hamilton Academy that reached the championship game of the Scottish Schools Cup a year later before his move to the USA.
He played professionally with teams in New York and New Jersey, captained Eintracht for four years in the German-American Soccer League (now Cosmopolitan Soccer League), and also played for the Swedish Club and Lindenhurst before ending his playing career with the Oceanside United men’s team in the Long Island Soccer Football League (LISFL).
McDougall was a Lynbrook resident and an active parishioner of the Grace Lutheran Church and School in Malverne for 57 years. The viewing will be held on Friday, October 20 from 4-8 pm at the Finch & Bruns Funeral Home, 34 Hempstead Avenue, Lynbrook, N.Y. 11563. The funeral service is at 10 am on Saturday, October 21 at the Grace Lutheran Church and School, 400 Hempstead Avenue, Malverne, N.Y. 11565. A reception will follow in the school gymnasium following the funeral.