Tietjens, Jim 2020

For an outstanding goal-keeper to be a success, you first need to be noticed, then given the chance and opportunity to play on a National Team, you need to be someone special with special instincts, an incredible work ethic, and a dynamic mental attitude, Jim Tietjens had that and then some.  Jim was in the nets for Oakville High Schools’ first State High School Championship in 1976.  Jim would also be chosen to tend the nets for the 1976-78 US National U-18 Team that included the Pan-American games of 1977.  In 1978 Jim was the 2^nd player chosen in the very first High School NASL Draft, but chose to attend St. Louis University, where he would stay for two years, with a Second Team All-American Honor in 1979.  The temptation to go professional was there and Jim jumped to the NASL Fort Lauderdale Strikers and played both indoor and outdoor from 1980-83.  Jim was loaned to the Kansas City Comets in 1984, their Indoor season, where he would have a dislocated shoulder that would put him on the sidelines most of the season.  The Fort Lauderdale Sun of the United Soccer League called Jim to be their keeper in 1984, where he would be injury free.  Jim led the League in fewest goals against, a First Team All-Star, and the team won the 1984 USL Championship Title.  Playing in front of Jim was fellow Hall of Famer Tom Groark (HOF 2015).  After only a few games the next year, Jim was once again leading the league in fewest goals against average, when the league folded.  Jim Tietjens was inducted into the St. Louis University Billiken Hall of Fame in 1995.  That dynamic mental attitude mentioned earlier, has enabled Jim to overcome not only his playing injuries, but also and more important, helped him battle through stage four cancer twice (non-Hodgkin lymphoma and throat cancer), a hereditary heart condition led Jim to receive a heart transplant in 1992.  In the summer of 1993 Jim competed in the World Transplant Olympics in Vancouver, Canada and in August of 2018, Jim needed a second transplant that was a heart-kidney transplant.  Jim returned to work in January of 2019 and continues to grow stronger on a daily basis.