This article on the Berlin High School is the sixth article in our Canadian Soccer History Series. It is Part 2 in a 3-part series on David Forsyth. NSXI has extracted and abridged these articles from the delightful book “Soccer: Canada’s National Sport”, written by Les Jones. See below for more information. You can find the full series here.
The Berlin High School team became the soccer standard of excellence under David Forsyth. They were runners-up in each of the first two years of the Dominion Football Association Challenge Cup. For at least four years, they swept all before them in the Western Football Association of Ontario. Between 1884 and 1888 they played 13 times for the Hough Cup losing just once. They then withdrew from the competition, to allow others to take the title.
As Berlin pupils matriculated, they formed the Berlin Rangers, an old boys’ team, managed by Forsyth. The team came to dominate the sport, winning the Western Football Association Challenge Cup in 1885. They went on to win the cup three more times in the next five contests. Those pupils who went on to the University of Toronto also helped make the Varsity a soccer powerhouse and regular winners of the Central (Ontario) Association. From 1889 to 1893 Varsity played 33 WFA matches, losing just one.
The success of the Berlin High School soccer team was matched by the growth of the school itself. When Forsyth joined, he was part of a three-man teaching staff. Twenty-eight years, later it had become the Kitchener and Waterloo Collegiate Institute, noted for the subsequent business successes of its graduates.
Many BHS graduates played for Canada both in the first international against the USA in 1885, and on the trailblazing tour of Britain in 1888 where the locals were ‘surprised by such proficiency in such a short time.’ Forsyth not only was the chief organizer of the tour and its reserve centre forward (scoring three goals in his eight games) but also the tour’s manager.
