FROM SAN DIEGO SOCKER TO HALL OF FAMER

As executive director of the Ballistic United Soccer Club, Kevin Crow was holding a coaches meeting in Pleasanton, Calif. on Dec. 7 when the session was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Ah, the pizza being delivered, Crow thought.

Instead, it was a surprise visitor, no other than U.S. men's national team legend Marcelo Balboa, who had a big smile on his face.

"Oh no," Crow said.

Balboa: "How are you doing my friend?"

Crow: "What are you doing?"

Balboa: "Well, let's just have a little bit of fun."

Then Balboa explained what it all meant.

"Seven championships, national team, Olympic team," he said. "I get the honor of letting you know, my friend, that you're a Hall of Famer. You're a part of the 2026 class of Hall of Fame."

Needless to say, a smiling Crow was stunned that he had been elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

"I initially thought, because a month or so prior, I had been inducted into the Cal North State Association Hall of Fame," Crow said in a recent interview. "Some of those people who I know well also entered the room at the same time as my family. Is this part B of the ceremony, that we did a month ago that I just wasn't aware of? Then Marcelo kind of goes, 'No knucklehead. You're going into the big hall of fame.’ "

You might say that Christmas came early for Crow this year, with the most prestigious honor an American soccer player can receive. He was elected on the Veteran's Ballot.

There was no doubt Crow deserved the honor, given his accomplishments in the indoor and outdoor versions of the beautiful game.

He played a vital role in seven San Diego Sockers indoor championship teams in eight years, from 1985 to 1992, securing MISL Defender of the Year honors five times and being named an All-MISL first team selection six times.  He also played on the 1983-84 North American Soccer League indoor championship team.

Crow, 64, also made 13 appearances with the U.S. men's national team. He participated in two Olympics (1984 and 1988).

He already was a member of six Halls of Fame: Tri-Valley, Ballistic United, Amador Valley High, San Diego State, Indoor Soccer, and Cal North.

Incredibly, Crow played his entire career with one club - the Sockers in three leagues, from 1983-1996.

"It's not like nowadays. It wasn't a lot of scouting that probably went on when it came to the college draft,” he said after playing at San Diego State. ”They probably drafted pretty local. I was just very fortunate to get drafted by the San Diego Sockers and walked into a group of guys that were not only just wonderful, talented individuals, but they literally accepted me and hopefully saw some ability that I was bringing to the table.

“I think they enjoyed my approach to the game. I just wanted to learn. I just wanted to pick their brain. I used to tell people all the time, 'We're so competitive, we have so much talent.' I had to deal with my teammates every day. Sometimes the game was like a relief. You're playing against someone that's not a knock against the competition. That's just a pat on the back to the Juli Veee's, Kaz Deyna's, Brian Quinn's, Branco Segota's and Steve Zungul's. All these people that I had to mark every day in practice."

Those five outstanding players excelled in both versions of soccer.

Crow became a fulltime indoor player after the NASL folded in 1984, while getting call-ups to the national team.

"You had to really stay dedicated and focused when you weren't with the national team, because … once the NASL folded everything in this country, went indoors," he said. "There was no USL, a second division. where you could make a living. In my first two years with the Sockers, we were playing indoors and outdoors, back-to-back. There really was no off season. I was in my early 20s. I was happy with that. We were having fun.”

For U.S. international at that time, it meant a unique challenge.

"The indoor game did not prepare you to play the outdoor game,” Crow said. “You had to stay fit, a different level of fitness. There was no one to go out and play with.  I would practice with the Sockers in the morning, and then I would go run in the afternoon, because I needed to stay fit for the outdoor game in the hope that I'd get called in."

Crow became an elite indoor defender from 1984 to 1992 in the MISL while receiving some high praise from teammates.

“I tell you, that kid, Kevin Crow, he’s becoming a great player,” Veee told the North County Times. “He’s made a difference on this team.”

“Kevin is probably one of the most talented players to emerge from the American collegian soccer system,” Deyna, one of the greatest Polish players, was quoted by the Manchester Evening News.

By the time Crow hung up his boots after the 1996 Continental Indoor Soccer League season, he had accumulated 83 goals and 93 assists in 433 indoor matches. He added 26 goals and 33 assists in 118 playoff contests.

He might have been a fierce backline player on the field, but Crow was humble off it.

After winning the MISL Defender of the Year for an unprecedented fifth time (and the fourth time in five seasons) in 1992, Crow downplayed the award.

“It’s always an honor to win an award like this,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “But this kind of honor is really a team thing. I’m more proud of having the best defense in the league — that’s the main reason I won the award.”

Crow recently elaborated on that subject.

"Soccer, to me, was just the ultimate team game," he said. "Growing up, I played all the sports. It's one of the things I actually encourage kids to do nowadays because I think kids are specializing too young, with all this pressure out there in any sport. The more sports you play, the better overall athlete you become. You learn something from each sport. I just fell in love with soccer. Practice was fun, the games were fun. You played both offense and defense. Everybody shared the ball. Everybody participated. I just loved it. I had a blast doing it. It was all about team. You don't play for individual awards. At least it wasn't the mindset for me. We played to win championships."

In recent years, Crow has returned to San Diego to participate in the Major Arena Soccer League club's alumni games. This year's match is scheduled for Feb. 7. Crow and his teammates helped the Sockers to start creating a unique legacy with 16 indoor titles.

"I go down see my chance to see some great teammates,” he said. “A lot of my ex-teammates are still in San Diego. I get a little bit of a dual benefit, because a lot of San Diego State teammates are still down there. I spend three or four days in San Diego and see as many people as I can. I'm a little bit nostalgic. They have moved to a new facility [Frontwave Arena]. But I still go down to the old arena and walk around it and just remember the good old days when that was our home."

After retiring, Crow became the general manager of the San Diego Spirit (Women's United Soccer Association) in 2001. He was named the league's Chief Operating Officer and moved his family to league headquarters in Atlanta in 2003.

"That was a hard leave, because I had to leave San Diego,” he said. "I had been for 22-24 years. Three months after I get there at a board meeting, Time Warner and Comcast decide they're bailing at the end of the year. I had a bad taste with that, because so much of it was just a business decision. I'm not wired that way, right or wrong. But it affected me and my family. I made a conscious decision that if I'm going to work the next 20-25 years of my life, I want to get back involved with the youth game."

Crow eventually returned to the club of his youth, the Ballistic United Soccer Club, in northern California, as executive director and coach.

"It was a really special opportunity," he said. "One of the things that really drives me is you can have an impact on a greater number of kids. It's building memories and teaching life lessons through sport, which is really what we're all about. It's not always about just winning trophies and things like that. There's more to it, because 99 percent of the kids that go through any club are never even going to play college soccer."

Crow went beyond college soccer, soaring to unprecedented heights in the indoor and outdoor games. He will be rewarded by being inducted into the Hall of Fame during ceremonies in Frisco, Texas on May 1, 2026.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. "I'm actually glad it's a little farther away than just two months, because it allows me to kind of sit back and enjoy it throughout that period of time. A couple days go by, and someone's texting me that heard about it or saw it on social media. There are people I haven't talked to for quite a while reaching out. So, it's really fun."

Michael Lewis, the sixth recipient of the Clay Berling Media Career of Excellence Award in 2025, can be followed on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky at @Soccerwriter.