Tito Laurini was a player, coach and referee during his soccer career. (Photo courtesy of the Rochester Lancers)
By Michael Lewis
FrontRowSoccer.com Editor
Tito Laurini was a soccer pioneer who helped influence the development of the beautiful game in Rochester, N.Y. in many ways.
He was an imposing taker of penalty kicks for the Italian American Sport Club, which captured the 1963 U.S. Amateur Cup national championship side. He was a member of the inaugural Rochester Lancers, who started professional soccer in the city. He also was the father and coach of the first women’s soccer player of renown in the city as Marianne Laurini set scoring records at St. John Fisher College.
He even had a short try at another type of football, American style.
Laurini passed away, it was announced on Friday.
He was 84.
“Tito was always an example of how a professional player should be during and after his career to all his fans!” said SoccerSam Fantauzzo, who revived the Lancers as an indoor team in 2011 and as men’s and women’s outdoor sides in 2017.
Born in L’Aquilia, Italy, Tito Laurini came over when he was 18-years-old, while visiting his mother’s three brothers in 1956. There were not many jobs available in the Abruzzi region in central Italy at the time, and Laurini said he was not interested in attending college.
“My parents didn’t want me to come, naturally, but my uncles were like parents,” he said. “I found myself very comfortable here, and I wound up staying. I was supposed to stay for three months, but eventually I ended up staying here all my life.”
Laurini found employment with Delco Products/General Motors for three decades. He also discovered the IASC, where he could play the game he loved so much for a dozen years.
It was, however, his on-the-field exploits that got his name in the local newspapers, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Rochester Times-Union.
A midfielder, Laurini’s strength was his ability to convert penalty kicks.
He could put them away like basketball players can sink free thows.
For example, in the IASC’s 3-2 win over the Carpathian Kickers of Detroit in the 1965 Amateur Cup Eastern quarterfinals, Laurini put away three PKs. After Detroit grabbed a 1-0 lead, Laurini slotted home the first into the left-hand corner past Art Kussner, the final one to the keeper’s other side.
“I was lucky to kick all three penalties,” he said. “Unbelievable. I was confident about taking it.”
Laurini’s secret? He did not try to blast the ball through the net; instead, he used finesse. “Probably placing the ball at the right place where I wanted, out of reach of the goalie,” he said. “I didn’t try to go there and kick the ball hard. My kicks were not very strong, but I would fake the goalie, thinking I would go to the right, and instead I would go to the left and vice versa. As long as you place the ball where you wanted, you will be ok, as far as you can away from the goalie. I was sure of myself by doing that. I was confident in myself.”
But never cocky. Laurini was a humble man on and off the soccer pitch.
He played for the Lancers in their first two seasons in the American Soccer League before returning to the IASC, playing through 1975. He was IASC president for two years and eventually was inducted into that organization’s Hall of Fame. In 2012, Laurini was welcomed into the Lancers Wall of Fame.
After hanging up his soccer boots for good, Laurini coached women’s soccer in the 1970’s and 1980’s, first with the Gates Carter Under-19 team for five seasons, a squad that won a national championship and toured Europe in 1979. He helped found the St. John Fisher College women’s team and served as coach from 1979-1986, winning a record 84 matches. Laurini also coached his daughter, Marianne, on the Gates Carter team and at St. John Fisher, where she set goal-scoring records.
“Quite a player,” Tito said.
Laurini also refereed high school and college matches, also worked as a linesman at Lancers games at Holleder Stadium, where he excelled as a player.
As it turned out, Laurini almost had a career switch to another brand of football – American style.
With the success of soccer-style specialist Pete Gogolak on the Buffalo Bills, NFL teams put up the periscope for soccer players who could boot a ball 40-50 yards consistently. Laurini decided to put his best foot forward and tried out for the Bills, who had just lost Gogolak to the New York Giants.
He lasted five days during the Bills’ pre-training camp, as he was cut on the final day. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that the Bills needed players with experience, and that Laurini had accuracy but needed more power. Laurini called that tryout “the most wonderful opportunity I ever had. It was a pleasure talking with such great stars as [quarterbacks] Jack Kemp and Daryl Lamonica, and eating at the dinner table with them.”
Still, the 5-11, 185-lb. Laurini wasn’t about to give up, and attended the New York Jets camp on Long Island. He didn’t make the team, but was offered to play for its farm club, the Jersey Jets. Also known as the Jersey Jayjets, the team called Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J. home. Laurini said he earned $100 a game. The team boasted defensive backs Randy Beverly, who would make two key interceptions for the Jets in their historic 16-7 upset victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969, Earl Christy, who made an untimely fumble on a kickoff return in the infamous Heidi Game against the Oakland Raiders in 1968, and former All-American quarterback Bobby Schweickert, a $100,000-bonus baby, signing with the parent club, a sizeable amount at that time.
Laurini acquitted himself well for a novice in the Atlantic Coast Football League. Depending on what statistic you believe, he finished second in scorers, with 75 points on the strength of 48 PATs and nine field goals, according to the Asbury Park Press, or with 64 points (40 PATS, eight field goals, according to the ProFootballArchives.com) behind Waterbury Orbits wide receiver Roger Milici (78 points, 13 touchdowns).
Since he wasn’t about to give up his “day job” at Delco Products, Laurini took a bus to New York, and returned home Saturday or Sunday night. If Laurini needed to stay overnight, the Jets paid for his room in a hotel or an apartment.
“For the first two-three weeks, I stayed there, and my wife came over and stayed with me once in a while,” he said. “We had three small children. GM gave me three or four weeks personal time. After that, I had to go back on my job or quit. I wasn’t sure I would make the team or not. I couldn’t take the chance of losing a job, a good job.”
With the Jets’ regular kicker, Jim Turner, inconsistent converting field goals during the 1966 American Football League season, the team signed Laurini for a $10,000 contract as insurance on Nov. 5. “When I got to New York it was raining for three or four days, and Shea Stadium was full of water,” Laurini said about the Jets’ home venue. “I couldn’t kick at all because it was so wet. So [head coach] Weeb Ewbank told me, ‘Come back next week, and see what happens, but we’re going to California.’”
The Jets were scheduled to play at the Oakland Raiders on Dec. 3, and at the San Diego Chargers on Dec 11. Turner found the range in both games (four field goals), and suddenly the Jets didn’t need Laurini, who returned to training camp the next summer. It wasn’t meant to be, as Laurini pulled a groin muscle early, and stayed in New York for four days. “It was not improving,” he said. “I couldn’t even play soccer. I was lucky I didn’t quit my job.”
Looking back at his football kicking days, Laurini said, “If I had experience, it probably would have been a different story. But who knows? That’s the way life goes. Good and bad. And we try to accept both of them, whatever they are.”
To learn and read more about Tito Laurini and his Rochester Lancers teammates, you might be interested in the definitive book about the Lancers:
