Massapequans Alan Bodenstein and Emily Pickering Harner Inducted Into LI Soccer Player Hall of Fame

At the Huntington Hilton on Saturday night, March 7, five soccer players who grew up playing in the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association (ENYYSA) were inducted in the Long Island Soccer Player Hall of Fame during the 33rd Annual Long Island Junior Soccer League (LIJSL) Convention. Two of the five, Alan Bodenstein and Emily Pickering Harner, are from Massapequa.

“All five of our inductees are trailblazers,” said Long Island Soccer Player Hall of Fame Founder Kevin McCrudden. “What they have done has opened doors for others who have come after them.”

Alan Bodenstein played for the LIJSL’s Massapequa Soccer Club while growing up. He competed for the Massapequa Santos and Massapequa Athletics when not working in his family’s Massapequa Soccer Shop and the New York Cosmos as a kid, where he spraypainted the Randall’s Island dirt green so the field looked okay when Pelé made his Cosmos debut on CBS in 1975. Alan was considered the best player of the Hofstra University team of the early 1980’s. His coach at Hofstra, Tom Lang, introduced him and said “he was quick, technical, could score goals and had a great passion to be the very best.”

Alan reached his prime during the “black hole” era of American professional soccer after the original North American Soccer League folded in 1984 and before Major League Soccer kicked off in 1996. So he found his game playing indoor soccer, being drafted by the New York Arrows and playing for the New York Express, New York Kick, Fort Wayne Flames and Dayton Dynamos and sometimes the checks bounced as much as the soccer balls. He also played outdoors for the U.S. Maccabiah and Pan American Maccabiah Teams plus coached the Adelphi University women. He is now the Director of Coaching for the Fort Wayne United FC youth club in Indiana.

Emily Pickering Harner also grew up playing for the Massapequa Soccer Club. Emily won a Regional championship with the Massapequa Thunderbirds, a state title with Berner High School, four NCAA championships with the University of North Carolina and she was three times selected All-American while at Chapel Hill. The list goes on and on as Emily won four club national titles (one with the Chapel Hill Kixx, three with the Annandale Boys and Girls Club) and four Over-30 national championships with Annandale. When the U.S. Women’s National Team was founded in 1986, she became the team’s first captain and assisted on the first-ever goal, by Michelle Akers. Emily is believed to be the first American to play professionally in Italy when she competed for Juventus Feminile in 1986-87.

“I was the weird girl who played sports,” Emily stated in her inducted speech. “Our idols were female roller derby players as there were no other women’s pro sports back then.”

Emily is now her daughter’s soccer coach in Virginia.

The other Long Island Soccer Player Hall of Fame inductees were Tom Lang, Ed Cody and Michael Windischmann. Congratulations to all five!