Ask anyone who knew Jimmy Banks about his seemingly supernatural soccer abilities – precision passing, scorpion-kick scoring – and they’ll say it’s all true.
The same goes for the legend of how he was discovered by UW-Milwaukee head coach Bob Gansler: juggling a soccer ball up and down Villard Avenue.
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“It was actually a drill he had, to be able to walk and juggle,” says his nephew Christopher Perceptions. “His playing style mirrored his practice – very specific, surgical, sharp and consistent.”
Banks eventually joined the UW-Parkside team in 1983 before transferring to UWM, kicking off a stellar playing career marked with accolades. He played six seasons for the Milwaukee Wave and in 1990 became one of the first Black Americans to play in the World Cup, etching himself in U.S. soccer history.
This distinction is only one reason why Friends of Jimmy Banks successfully campaigned to rename Milwaukee Public Schools’ Custer Stadium in his honor in 2022. Now, they’ve fundraised for a new mural at the stadium telling his story, which will be completed this year.
Banks died from cancer in 2019 at age 54, and in the years since, the grassroots group has been spreading not just his legacy as possibly the greatest athlete to come out of Milwaukee, but his legacy as a person.
Growing up in the Westlawn housing projects in the 1970s, Banks began playing soccer at age 6 at the nearby Salvation Army. He would ride his bike from the Northwest Side to Greendale to hone his skills with one of the few soccer clubs at the time, the Milwaukee Bavarians.
In college, Banks was an offensive juggernaut, but he switched to left defender when joining the U.S. men’s national team. He stepped out of the goal-scoring spotlight to go where the team needed him the most, says Wendell Willis, a longtime fan and eventual friend of Banks.
After hanging up the cleats in 1993, Banks stayed in Milwaukee. He continued the soccer league he launched in 1990 at the former LaVarnway Boys & Girls Club, introducing the sport to kids who had never considered it.
Later, he co-founded the Milwaukee Simbas, which still provides opportunities for a diverse range of kids in the city to play competitive soccer. And as the head coach of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, he became a role model and mentor to many.
Banks rarely talked about his accomplishments. Those who knew him chalk it up to his humble, reserved personality, and it maybe explains why his unlikely story isn’t widely known.
But Friends of Jimmy Banks hopes the new mural, painted by Tia Richardson, will change that by putting a face to the stadium name.
“There’s only so many people you know in life that truly go and give back, and they do it altruistically,” says MSOE coach Rob Harrington, who was an assistant when Banks had the job. “Jimmy did that, and I think that type of person needs to be celebrated.”
