Born on October 16th, 1950 – just three years before Balboa Park Soccer Stadium opened – Otey Cannon would come up in that neighborhood, watch the men play soccer at the park and eventually attend Balboa High School, just a stone’s throw from that famous San Francisco soccer ground. Cannon, and his best friends since the third grade (Sal Corona, Jerry Tighe, and Mickey Duzdevich) were teammates off the pitch and on it – all joining their high school varsity squad as juniors in 1965. They went on to run the rule over their competition and won the city championship that year – beating rivals Washington High School. According to historian Patrick Horne, “In the two years of high school varsity soccer that the players were allowed, the quartet led the Buccaneers to a 20-6 regular season record and registered 38 goals between them while winning the ’65 City title.”

While they lost the championship the following year to the very same nemesis, the four, seniors by 1966, caught the attention of several colleges in the Bay Area. None of those schools, however, offered the boys from San Francisco a scholarship to play soccer so they made a plan to stick together and play at San Francisco Junior College. Cannon, who had won All-City awards in both his junior and senior year in high school, was an exceptional soccer player and those skills translated well when they bumped up a level. The four helped register back-to-back undefeated regular seasons for their new school and topped it off with an eleven-goal bonanza on October 4, 1967 when Cannon smashed home four goals, Duzdevich two, and Corona one.

Horne tells us “Cannon’s scoring reputation was widespread in California, which led to trials in 1966 for the US 1968 Olympic team and later for the Detmar Cramer-coached US national team for the 1970 World Cup Qualifications.” Despite having displayed an uncanny knack to score goals in buckets, Otey was played out of position during the trials and lined up at left back – a place he had never slotted in at before. Cannon fought through the adversity and put on an end-to-end display, getting forward to help in the attack and ensuring he was able to recover his position to help on the defensive side of things – he was still not selected. On the other hand, Don Batie, head coach at Chico State University, knew there was a place in his team for Cannon and recruited him, and his friends, to come play soccer for his school in Northern California.

Cannon transferred into Chico State as a Junior, after two years at San Francisco Junior College, and played only two seasons for the Wildcats. From 1970 to 1971 he racked up, what was at the time, a school-record 42 goals. Alumni Ben Pollock (1985-88) is first now with 44 total goals and Chris Wondolowski is third with 39. However, Cannon still retains first and second place for single-season records with 23 and 19 respectively. In both seasons at the school, Cannon led the team to conference championships and post-season play. While blowing out Seattle Pacific in one of those championships, he netted a double-hattrick – tonking their defense for 6 goals in one game. What’s more, that was not his only hattrick for the school – Otey Cannon was an absolute scoring machine and found himself on the radar of the scouts for the North American Soccer League – a league who had never fielded an American-born black player before.

Despite his high ceiling and proven ability to produce goals, Otey Cannon had to wait until the third round of the draft to be selected by the Dallas Tornado. Dallas had finished with the fourth best record in the NASL in 1972 (second in the Southern Division) and were knocked out of the playoffs by none other than the New York Cosmos. Just a year prior to that, Dallas had won the league with goals from established forward Mike Renshaw. Additionally, Dallas had selected forward Kyle Rote Jr., son of American Football star Kyle Rote, in the first round of the draft already and the Tornado didn’t really need to bring in another goal-scorer, but Cannon was still available so it was an easy choice to make. In addition to being a tremendous threat on the pitch, Otey was also ran track and ran the 100-yard dash in under 10 seconds. What’s more, he showed during his time during National Team camps that he was able to adapt to playing out of position and could be considered for depth at left back – which is exactly where Tornado coach Ron Newman intended to put him. This goes a long way to explain how Cannon went from scoring goals in buckets for his high school, junior college, and collegiate program to registering zero goals in two years for Dallas.

According to the stats, Cannon also only made 11 official league appearances for the Tornado during his time in Dallas, so that when assistant coach John Best took the position of Head Coach with expansion side Seattle Sounders in 1974, Otey was excited to go with him. Cannon spent two years in Seattle and was still played out of position – making only 10 appearances, but at least scoring one goal for the club. After four frustrating and fruitless years in the NASL, Otey took a move to Sacramento to play for the Sacramento Spirit / Sacramento Gold of the American Soccer League (ASL). He was back to his old scoring ways, making 57 appearances for the team and banging in 16 goals. After 6 years of professional soccer, though, Otey “Boom Boom” Cannon hung up his boots and retired from the professional soccer ranks.

- Joshua Duder

Cannon scoring his first and only goal for Seattle Sounders

Sources:
Chico State University Media Guide: https://chicowildcats.com/documents/2019/9/26/2019_Soccer_Media_Guide_with_cover_ADA_compatible.pdf

Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otey_Cannon

This Year in American Soccer - 1976:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150107061400/http://homepages.sover.net/~spectrum/year/1976.html#ASL

NASL - Jersies: https://www.nasljerseys.com/Players/C/Cannon.Otey.htm

Horne, Patrick: Black Pioneers of the North American Soccer League (1968-84)
Page Publishing, New York, NY. 2019