Dick Hall created his own luck.
If you ask the 80-year-old North Texas soccer pioneer about being inducted into the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday, he’ll react about as modestly as one could imagine. He’s not entirely sure why he’s being honored, because all he did throughout his life was respect and support the game he loved.
But if you ask those whose lives he directly affected, such as his players at Greenhill School, they’ll respond with countless stories of Hall pushing for equity in sports programs, establishing what would become modern player development practices and presenting an overall aura of professionalism — and that’s just his post-playing career.
“When people had faith in me and my family,” Hall said, “it’s been wonderful, truly.”
His career and legacy could be summarized with a phrase he preached to his players: “You make your own luck.”
High School Sports
Dick Hall, a former Dallas Tornado soccer player who won 15 state championships as coach of Greenhill’s boys team, will be inducted into the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday, March 7, 2026.
Greenhill Academy / Courtesy
“Luck would be on your side because you’d be doing everything you possibly could in advance,” said David Perryman, who was on Hall’s first Southwest Preparatory Conference championship team at Greenhill in 1982. “That would kind of win the day when it came to luck. Those are good lessons that transcend the soccer pitch.”
Hall was born in England and played for Weymouth FC, where he went through the youth academy, and AFC Bournemouth. When his professional contract was up in 1970, his former Weymouth manager put him in contact with Ron Newman, a player-coach for the Dallas Tornado, who signed Hall to play for the North American Soccer League team.
That same year, the founding headmaster at Greenhill, Bernard Fulton, needed a coach. He turned to Hall, who was working to establish youth soccer camps around North Texas with Newman and teammate Bobby Moffat.
The trio helped lead Dallas to its first and only NASL championship in 1971, and Hall became a U.S. citizen and earned four caps for the national team before retiring in 1976.
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After listening to Hall speak in one of Greenhill’s portable buildings, Perryman vividly remembers being determined to play soccer as a fourth-grader. The player he had just witnessed go toe-to-toe with Brazilian soccer phenom Pele, then with the NASL’s New York Cosmos, was now promoting the game to him and his friends.
“He has just a resonant voice in his British dialect,” Perryman said. “The way he carries himself is just so professional, polished and so serious, but not in a standoffish, unapproachable way.”
Dallas Tornado midfielder Bobby Moffat (14) goes up for a header against New York Cosmos star Pelé during a June 1975 exhibition game at Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island in New York.
The Associated Press / 1975 File Photo
As a full-time head coach, Hall forged a path as a youth soccer pioneer in North Texas, establishing Greenhill as the dominant soccer program of the 1980s. Before retiring in 2010, he had led Greenhill to 15 SPC championships, including seven in a row from 1982 to 1988. He was named the school’s athletic director in 1980, a rarity for non-football coaches, particularly in the SPC.
“I took a lot of stick from time to time but we got through it,” Hall said. “Once they knew that we were what we were trying to do in the soccer program that was developed, it kind of encouraged the other schools to work with their programs, too.”
Under Hall’s guidance, Greenhill overtook St. Mark’s and other rivals as the SPC’s dominant athletic program, winning 70 conference championships in all sports from 1981 until his retirement in 2010.
“I was given the full range really, financially, with budget and so forth,” Hall said. “I showed a lot of support to the girls program and that helped to gain over the people who had a little concern at Greenhill on if we would just worry about the boys, but that wasn’t the case.”
Hall was also a proponent of pushing players to compete outside of Greenhill, whether in club soccer or other sports.
Perryman was a three-sport athlete in football, soccer and track and field, eventually going to Wesleyan to play soccer. He said Hall was one of the first administrators in the area to open Greenhill’s facilities to the community for wider use when school wasn’t in session, establishing a grassroots connection to the surrounding neighborhoods.
And in the midst of it all, Hall still had time to wrap Perryman’s ankles pre-match.
“To be British, to be Black at that time, and a leader, a visible leader, who no one ever questioned,” Perryman said. “You never questioned the coach’s decisions or authority or knowledge or anything like that. He’s just a remarkable person.”
Coming from English soccer to the States gave Hall an outside perspective at the time in helping to build what would become the tentpole foundations for soccer culture in the United States. Skill development and man management, which are commonplace today, Hall based his training and tutelage around almost 50 years ago.
Skill level has to be high, Hall said, “if you want to be competitive at the level they’re at internationally. That’s what we were doing.”
Ask Hall about what next steps the country needs to take to further establish itself as a soccer nation, and unsurprisingly, he points back to the grassroots and youth development.
“If you look throughout the world in any level of soccer and football, they got the academies. They’ll get the players in at an early day and age, and they go through and they develop them through the system, and the different levels.”
When Hall’s name is announced Saturday as part of the 2026 Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame class, it will be for having an impact across communities and nations. But for Hall, he simply tried to share the game that changed his life with as many people as he could.
“Hey, I did something that I love to do, which was play football, play soccer, coach, and I was fortunate to be somewhat successful in it,” Hall said. “All the things that I did, I would never have done without this development sport that I love.”
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