Dick Cecil began his sports career at Lincoln High School, in Nebraska, with the baseball team. He earned his B.A. degree at the University of Nebraska and was their freshman baseball coach in 1956. He became a scout for the Atlanta Braves baseball club, moved up to Assistant Farm System Director, to Administrative Assistant, to Business Manage, to Assistant to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, and finally to Vice President of the Braves organization.

When the Atlanta Braves Baseball Club decided in the fall of 1966 to bring a professional soccer team to Atlanta they chose Dick Cecil to lead the effort. Coming up with a credible professional soccer team was a formidable task. After recruiting Phil Woosnam as coach and general manager, the task of assembling a team lead Dick to man corners of the soccer world, including Great Britain, France, Sweden, south Africa, Zambia, Ghana, and the Caribbean countries. Both Dick and Phil labored long and hard braking down the diplomatic, national and business barriers that they found, and were able to assemble a premier team for Atlanta. Throughout the years with the Atlanta Chiefs, a well-defined set of goals for a team were followed. First, players or excellence, with a balance of age, skill, experience, and soccer flair was chosen. Next, players who could help promote this new game were identified, those who were comfortable addressing an audience, conducting coaching clinics, or coaching players and local youth teams. Players were chosen who could communicate in a common language so that a dialogue with the Georgia soccer community could take place, and finally, players had to exemplify top-class; exciting soccer, sportsmanship, and fair play as a model for our Georgia game. Major results were the League Championship won by the Atlanta Chiefs in 1968, the first-ever professional sports championship for Atlanta, and the support of dedicated volunteer groups who organized our first statewide amateur adult and youth soccer programs.

Dick Cecil served as: Vice President of the Atlanta Chiefs Soccer Club, Chairman of the National Professional Soccer League’s Players Committee, founding Director of the North American Soccer League, a member of the International Games Committee of the USSF, a consultant to Coca-Cola USA on domestic soccer programs, President and Co-owner of the Atlanta Chiefs 1979-1981, Club of the NASL, Director of the East Coast Football Venues for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, producer of the FIF/UNICEF World All Star Games in 1986, a consultant to the 1994 World Cup USA, and a consultant to the 1996 Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. He was named the Executive of the Year by the North American Soccer League in 1968.

Georgia couldn’t have been luckier in having Dick Cecil as a key mover in bringing soccer here. Dick Cecil worked tirelessly to see that all soccer in Georgia grew and prospered. Without his involvement, it might not have happened.