BOUNTIFUL — When Hugh Wigham relocated his family to Utah from London, the Davis County area had about as many soccer fields as England had American football stadiums at the time.
My, how things have changed — in Davis County, at least — since the 1960s.
Four decades later, the Bountiful area has evolved into a soccer hotbed, with dozens of fields and thousands of players who kick the black and white ball around. The sport has grown so much here, said Wigham's son, Dave, that Davis County enthusiasts claim to have more soccer players per capita than any other county in the country.
The community did, however, recently lose one of the sport's biggest fans and pioneers when Hugh Wigham passed away last week after a battle with cancer. The forefather of foreign football in Davis County was 78 years old.
Wigham's influence on soccer and its participants in these parts was far-reaching. His son — a well-known soccer coach at Bountiful High — always knew that. But the fact became even more evident recently when the family was deluged with e-mails, letters and comments describing what a great example and coach he'd been. Dave Wigham was getting his tires changed at a shop a couple of weeks ago when a stranger talked about what a great role model his father had been for him.
"He certainly had an impact," Dave Wigham said. "Everywhere I go people are telling me about my dad."
Hugh Wigham lived in England until he moved his family to Utah after converting to the LDS Church — and giving up whisky and cigars — in the early 1960s.
Though he left Great Britain, he brought his love for the kingdom's favorite sport across the ocean. After all, soccer wasn't just a big part of his life, it was in his British blood. Dave Wigham said that because of his father's English roots, Americans often would ask him if soccer was a matter of life or death.
His dad always answered: "No, it's much more important than that."
"He taught me a passion for the game," his son added. "He had a passion for the game that very few had."
The elder Wigham was once one of the stone-faced guards at Buckingham Palace. And it was while he was in the British army that he made a name for himself as an athlete. Wigham was the armed forces national champion in tennis. He played for the national team in field hockey. He also played soccer for the army. His son explained that Wigham "fancied himself as a center-half." He laughed and added, "So he could be the boss."
It wasn't too long after moving to Bountiful — his missionaries and the mayor and his wife facilitated his relocation and helped land him a job at the city cemetery — that Wigham began sharing his passion in baseball territory. He organized the first youth soccer team in the area and helped create the first high school squad in Davis County in the late '60s. He later became the president of the Utah Soccer Association and was eventually the first inductee into the Utah Soccer Hall of Fame. He also persuaded Bountiful city officials to build more soccer fields.
"He drove them nuts," his son laughed.
But he got results.
"After Hugh Wigham got here, he immediately went to establishing what he knew best, and that was soccer," said Ken Murri, who was one of the original 22 boys who met on a field nearby the Bountiful Rec Center to learn the sport on spring and summer afternoons in the mid-'60s. "He developed quite a following among all these young people. . . . He was truly a pioneer of soccer."
At first, the training wasn't exactly technical. Wigham simply would have the boys gather around him on the field, then tell them in his booming voice where to run and he'd kick it to them. After a while, they became quite adept at knowing where to be and what to do when they got the ball. His intricate knowledge and insight eventually was ingrained into their new soccer minds.
The squad wasn't exactly rolling in money, either. The boys divided up into two teams but could only afford enough uniforms for one team. After the younger players (10-and-under) played an early game, parents and older players would gather around them while the little boys changed into their street clothes and passed on the uniforms to the bigger boys.
It was a humble beginning. But after a couple of years of tough luck and losses, the boys were beating clubs from Orem and Layton, and even a tough team from California in one of the first-ever interstate matches. Soccer has been a favorite sport here ever since. In fact, since the Utah High School Activities Association started tracking state soccer championships in the early 1970s, high school squads from Bountiful, Woods Cross and Viewmont have won 22 titles and have been in the thick of things for many more. Murri and his club won twice.
Murri, who kept in touch with Wigham since playing for him as a 9-year-old, said his old coach taught the boys more than just soccer. He helped shape their lives, too.
"I consider Hugh — next to my own father — the best mentor in the world," Murri said. "I bet there's hundreds of youth soccer coaches that learned at the feet of Hugh Wigham that still coach today. He was a great influence on a lot of young people. If I had to write the headline: He built more than soccer players, he built some great people."
One of Murri's favorite recent stories about Wigham happened at Thanksgiving dinner in 2001. He was at home in St. George, eating some good-old American grub, but he was watching a soccer match instead of a traditional turkey day football game.
But, Dave Wigham pointed out that his father "became an American in every sense of the word" after he immigrated here. Proof came at his Hall of Fame induction when he told the crowd he'd cheer for the United States over England if they were ever to play.
Wigham was gratified to see Utah's soccer fields blossom during his lifetime here, going from basically nothing to landing a Major League Soccer team.
"He was so excited. He pretty well knew that cancer (had) taken hold, but he still bought season tickets to support it," Dave Wigham said. "He came to the opening game. He was in a wheelchair, but he was there. He loved it."
Wigham's favorite club from England was Arsenal. That led to some lively banter with his son, who rooted for rival Fulham. Wigham was such a big fan of Arsenal he told his son that he'd write him out of his will if he named his only daughter Chelsea — a name Dave Wigham loved but one that was also the name of another Arsenal rival.
"Out of respect for him, I didn't," Dave Wigham said. They ended up naming her Jennifer, and, of course, she was a good soccer player. So were his two other children, Zach and Matt.
In honor of his dad, he's also for years named each of his youth soccer squads "Gunners," which is Arsenal's nickname. The American equivalent would be a Yankees fan naming his youth baseball teams the Red Sox out of respect for his Boston-loving father. People who knew that sometimes ask him why. Again, Dave Wigham's answer is simply: "Out of respect for him."
And that's respect well-earned — by many more people than just his son.
E-mail: jody@desnews.com