A Reverend Wins With Irreverence

Life has laughed at the Rev. Cliff (Uncle Nubs) McCrath for the better part of his 49 years, laughed at his maimed left hand, his eccentricities, his innocence, his tragic past and his old-time religion.

McCrath chuckles right back, pretending to go along with the joke until, suddenly, you realize he is guffawing his way toward NCAA soccer immortality.

And, the way he figures it, toward something a bit more rewarding.

Folks never have known quite what to think about this McCrath fellow--and with good reason. One of his favorite pastimes is catching someone, uh, probing nasal or ear passages. McCrath stares until the unsuspecting person realizes that he has an audience.

“But here’s the great thing,” he says. “They always look again to see if you’re still watching them.”

So, as if every middle-aged minister does this sort of thing, McCrath takes his left hand, the one with three digits missing, and pretends to be searching his ear or nose. Well, it’s not a pretty sight, but McCrath says that it makes him laugh and that on occasion it makes the other guy laugh, too.

And isn’t that what life’s about? he asks.

In 1978, McCrath told a small gathering that if his Seattle Pacific University team won the NCAA Division II championship, “I’ll shave my mustache, crawl from the campus to the Space Needle and buy everyone at school a Pepsi.”

Yes, well, to his surprise, Seattle Pacific won the national title. Soon after, McCrath had raw knees, sore wrists and aching shoulders, byproducts of the 2.7-mile journey from SPU to the Seattle landmark. So painful was the 3-hour 10-minute crawl that he went down hills backward.

McCrath lost seven pounds, but added to his growing reputation as a man who may never have had oars to put into the water in the first place.

The day wasn’t a total disaster, though. A soft-drink distributor paid for the Pepsis.

McCrath has jumped into a truck filled with Jell-O to celebrate a victory. Once he performed a wedding ceremony while the happy couple ran in a marathon. McCrath backpedaled for 1.5 miles.

“He’s bizarre,” said Dennis Gunnell, a former SPU player and now McCrath’s assistant coach.

“He’s nuts,” said an NCAA official. “But don’t quote me.”

“Absolutely nuts,” said Walt Bowman, one of McCrath’s former players who now is athletic director at Chapman College in Orange. Bowman should know. When Bowman played at Wheaton College in Illinois, McCrath not only coached the team but also doubled as the trainer.

McCrath wore a suit and tie--”No one knew how a soccer coach should dress in those days,” he said--as he went about his duties, which included taping his players’ ankles.

Money was scarce, so even a roll of athletic tape was not to be wasted. Once, while taping Bowman’s ankles, McCrath noticed that he had somehow taped his tie to his star’s skin. Rather than waste an otherwise fine effort, and the tape, McCrath took a pair of scissors and snipped off his tie.

A hesitant Bowman was sent toward the field where, McCrath’s tie flapping in the breeze, he scored two goals. “We won, too,” said Bowman.

Nowadays, McCrath wears blue warmups and black soccer shoes. To class. To fund-raisers. To Rotary Club functions. To restaurants. He doesn’t wear ties anymore, but he does wrap his shoelaces around his ankles.

This, ladies and gentlemen, soon will be collegiate soccer’s next coach to win 300 games. At last count, McCrath had 287 victories to his credit. If all goes well this season, he will join Steve Negoesco of the University of San Francisco, Bill Shellenberger of Lynchburg College in Virginia and Bob Guelker of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, coaches whose teams have already won 300.

You do not go down to the corner 7-Eleven and pick up 300 victories. McCrath has toiled for nearly 27 seasons, has won two NCAA Division II championships, has finished second four times and third once, and just now is edging toward the magic number. Earlier this season, SPU was ranked No. 1 in Division II. Not bad for someone who didn’t learn the game until his freshman year in college.

“I thought soccer was something girls played during recess,” McCrath said.

He has spent the last 16 years at Seattle Pacific, a private, Free-Methodist institution that asks its 2,800 students to abstain from alcohol and dancing while on campus. The school also prefers that its female students go light on the makeup.

SPU is best known in Washington for its morals, business school and McCrath’s soccer team. For this, McCrath receives profuse thanks, no on-campus soccer field and 1.13 athletic scholarships for his entire 27-man team. A full ride at SPU means a trip in a car.

“I don’t know what else to do except to show up at this place and kick butt for the glory of God,” said McCrath.

McCrath may be playing with another deck of cards, but he is no dummy. His teams rarely commit blunders and are well schooled in all phases of the game. SPU was 6-0--all on the road--this season before losing to Division I Air Force, 1-0. Again, Air Force had the home-hangar advantage. And a few other benefits.

“We were put up in an old athletic dorm,” said McCrath, smiling. “No towels, soap, toilet paper. One of their officers suggested we use our pillow cases as towels.” McGrath had stopped his car, climbed over a fence and was standing in the mud, watching a kids’ soccer game. He says he gets some of his best coaching ideas from watching little kids play.

“He’s the No. 1 soccer coach in the country and could have any job,” said Bowman, who himself won more than 200 games as a coach before becoming an athletic director. “He’s nuts, but his teams play loose.”

Why not? On the road, McCrath disdains the conventional vans for travel. “We rent five Lincoln Continental Town Cars,” he said. “It’s cheaper.” Imagine the surprise of opposing teams when McCrath’s group pulls up in cars meant for oil executives or prom night.

SPU also stays at the finest hotels, courtesy of McCrath’s bartering with innkeepers. He tells his teams: “If you drive like kings, you’ve got to live like kings. And then you’ve got to play like kings.”

So they do.

Seattle Pacific is expected to make another appearance in the NCAA playoffs this year. That means that McCrath’s soccer camp should remain popular and rewarding. And maybe another pro soccer franchise will approach him about another job. McCrath already has turned down several pro offers during his stay at SPU.

Hear McCrath chuckle back.

There was a time, though, when McCrath had reservations at reform school and, if he persisted, jail. He grew up in Detroit and Grand Rapids. His father--”A big blood-and-guts guy,”--was one of the Motor City’s finest until he was stabbed in the head one day. Upon his unexpected recovery, the police department suggested involuntary retirement.

“To me, he was a hero,” McCrath said.

By the time McCrath was 5, though, his parents were divorced. When he was 8, while playing hide and seek, McCrath found an empty shotgun shell. Except that the shell wasn’t empty and it wasn’t for a shotgun. It was a blasting cap, and somehow McCrath held a lighted match too close to the small, dynamite cartridge. “That’s when the world exploded,” he said.

In an instant, parts of his thumb, forefinger and index finger were gone.

“I was now the kid picked last on every team, rather than first,” he said.

McCrath learned to catch a golf ball with his left hand. Then, while watching a sandlot baseball game one day, he dived for a hard-hit foul ball and caught it. He stood up and shouted, “There, now can I play?” He was picked in the next game.

School was an annoyance, though. He and a friend found crime more agreeable. “We were always in some kind of trouble, every day of our lives,” he said. “We knocked off a lot of stores . . . petty larceny. If a house looked abandoned, we would break into it. If a store’s back door was open, we would go in and steal something.

“I’ve blacked out a lot of that because I’ve felt a great deal of remorse for some of the stuff I did.” McCrath found religion quite by accident, and before it became fashionable. For no other reason than to please his girlfriend, McCrath, then in his late teens, attended a revival meeting, complete with tent and a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

“Some of it made sense,” he said.

He returned to the revival. And went back again.

Soon, he had stopped swearing. Later, he abandoned his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit. A commitment had been made. “If it wasn’t real, then it would have been over two weeks later,” he said.

He found his way to Wheaton, where he became an All-American on the soccer field, a player-coach by his senior season and a legend in the school cafeteria. Even today you can order a ‘Nubby Burger.’

“He hasn’t changed one iota,” Bowman said. “He never has a valley. He only goes peak to peak.”

McCrath is in constant motion. On occasion, you can find him in his office, where his secretary’s young son, Skip, crawls and stumbles into doors, chairs and visitors. Instead of losing his secretary, Sandy Liddle, to the rigors of housekeeping, McCrath arranged for a playpen to be put in an adjoining room. This is Liddle’s second child to use the makeshift nursery.

Players wander into his office between classes. The phone rings constantly. A physical education course is to be taught shortly, and McCrath is not sure of the location of his classroom. Visitors wait in the lobby for an audience. Soccer practice is later.

McCrath stops for a moment and observes the madness. There is joy in his face. And laughter in his voice. Always laughter. It is what he knows best.