Professional
Stock signed with the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1978. He spent both that season and the next on the reserve team under Jimmy Gabriel before breaking into the first team in 1980. That season, he became a regular left back in the Sounders’ defensive scheme, seeing time in 23 games and scoring one goal. This put him in competition for Rookie of the Year against team mate Mark Peterson and fellow Seattle area youth defender Jeff Durgan, now playing with the New York Cosmos. While Durgan won the award, Stock continued to excel with the Sounders, playing 35 games in both the 1981 and 1982 seasons. In 1983, Stock lost most of the season after blowing out his right knee in the Sounders' fifth game. The Sounders folded at the end of the season and the San Jose Earthquakes selected Stock in the dispersal draft in anticipation of the upcoming NASL indoor season. However, his knee injury kept out of the line up until the last few games of the season. The Earthquakes then traded him to the Vancouver Whitecaps. In 1984, he played in 20 games. That year the Whitecaps also competed in the F.C. Seattle Challenge ‘84. The host team, F.C. Seattle, later change its name to the F.C. Seattle Storm, a team Stock joined in 1987. On October 20, 1984, the Whitecaps released Stock. He then went on trial with the Tacoma Stars of the Major Indoor Soccer League, but he aggravated his knee injury and was forced to sit out a year after having athroscopic surgery. In October 1985, Stock with the Tacoma Stars. By this time knee injuries had begun to hinder Stock and the hard surface of an indoor soccer arena exacerbated the problems leading him to retire in December 1986. On March 4, 1987, Stock returned to outdoor soccer with the F.C. Seattle Storm of the Western Soccer Alliance (WSA) as a player/assistant coach. The move back to the grass of an outdoor soccer field helped extend his career by a few years. In 1988 he was selected to the WSA All Star team. He also served as an assistant coach in both 1987 and 1988. However, his knees finally gave and in 1989 he retired from playing professionally to devote himself to coaching.
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Famous quotes containing the word professional:
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“I sometimes wonder whether, in the still, sleepless hours of the night, the consciences of ... professional gossips do not stalk them. I myself believe in a final reckoning, when we shall be held accountable for our misdeeds. Do they? If so, they have cause to worry over many scoops that brought them a day’s dubious laurels and perhaps destroyed someone’s peace forever.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“As a scientist I’m afraid I’m a professional skeptic who doubts everything, even the certainties.”
—Karl Brown (1897–1990)