Andrew W. "Poly" Guyda (born Andrew Gajda; February 26, 1907 – June 4, 1956) was an American

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

player who was a member of the U.S. soccer team at the

1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...

Early life

Guyda was born in 1907 in Manchester, New Hampshire as Andrew Gajda. He attended Manchester High, where he was a football quarterback from 1924 to 1926. He later went to

Lowell Institute The Lowell Institute is a United States educational foundation located in Boston, Massachusetts, providing both free public lectures, and also advanced lectures. It was endowed by a bequest of $250,000 left by John Lowell Jr., who died in 1836. ...

and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for college.

Career

Guyda was known for being a smaller player in stature. Guyda was signed by the Revere Corinthians in 1926, and later played for other soccer teams such as

Boston Soccer Club The Boston Soccer Club was a member of the American Soccer League. They were renamed the Boston Bears for the Fall 1929 ASL season. In 1925, the ASL and the St. Louis Soccer League (SLSL) boycotted the National Challenge Cup, now known as the ...

, Thornton Victorias, Boston Celtics, and Lusitano Recs. Guyda also won the two mile two-state championship in 1929. Guyda was selected to play for the United States men's national soccer team at the

and played as part of the American League All-Star team in 1934 in Europe. Guyda hurt his knee in 1938, which put him out of action for several months.

Later life and death

Guyda later served as an assistant coach at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, as well as head coach of the freshman team. He died at his home in Waltham, Massachusetts, on June 4, 1956.

References

External links

*
Andrew Gajda's profile at Sports Reference.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guyda, Andrew 1907 births 1956 deaths American men's soccer players Sportspeople from Manchester, New Hampshire Soccer players from New Hampshire United States men's international soccer players Olympic soccer players for the United States Footballers at the 1936 Summer Olympics Men's association football forwards Boston Soccer Club players