Youth and Early Career
Although Stark and his brother Tommy Stark were born in Scotland, they moved to the United States with when Archie was thirteen years old. His family settled in Hudson County, New Jersey where Stark immediately began his organized soccer career with the West Hudson Juniors. Interestingly for a player who made his name as a forward, Stark began as a defender with the Juniors. Stark turned professional a year later when he signed with the Scottish-Americans of the National Association Football League for the 1912-1913 season. At the time he was only fourteen. He remained with the Scottish-Americans for four seasons. In 1915, the Scottish-Americans won the 1915 American Cup, defeating Brooklyn Celtic 1-0 on a Stark goal. The next season, the team lost the AFA championship game when Bethlehem Steel crushed them 3-0. At the end of the 1915-1916 season, Stark moved to the Bayonne, New Jersey club Babcock and Wilcox.
However, World War I intervened and Stark joined the U.S. Army in 1917, briefly interrupting his career. Stark served in France.
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Famous quotes containing the words youth, early and/or career:
““I don’t suppose there’s a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There’s youth to the amount of eight hundred pound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I’d take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get ‘em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among ‘em as nothing should equal it!””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)