A Letter to the Team I Left Behind

This is an open-hearted note to the players of college soccer teams across the nation, in particularly, the new freshman class. I was recently asked what was the greatest experience of my life. A fully-loaded question for anyone. Immediately I thought back to the very last practice I had as a college player before our senior game where the entire squad and coaching staff stood together in the center circle of our incredible stadium reflecting on the journey we had just endured together. As captain, I was the last person to share my emotions and all I could really conjure up was “thank you for the greatest experience of my life.” It was a simple yet powerful phrase as every person then came together for one last embrace. We won our senior game 2-0 (though it could have been 4 or 5) and it was our greatest performance of the season coming on the last day of October. It was a day that will certainly live long in my memory.

It really is an incredible thing that happens in such a short period of time. In 2013, I arrived on Nazareth campus to meet my new teammates and play collegiate soccer, something I always wanted. I could not contain my excitement as I had been looking forward to the first training session and first game the entire summer. I felt like the new kid on the block and made a great impression on the pitch during my first season, something not always common for freshmen to do. Just three years later, I was already captain for 18 months and would be leading a new-look Nazareth team into the season with a new coach in charge. It amazes me how quickly college sports teams change. First you are a young kid trying to get a starting spot and then very quickly, the guys you looked up to on the team are gone and you must now take over the reigns. There is always quick turnover in this business, but the life lessons and various experiences a college-athlete will gain are priceless and unique.

Now I’m not going to lie and say my time at Nazareth was perfect and all smiles. I experienced pretty much everything one could imagine from highs of scoring winning goals and beating your rivals, to lows of missing a season through injury and not always reaching the team’s potential where we truly fell into the abyss. Still, my passion and love for the game I loved since I was 5 never waned. Perhaps I spent too much of my college years worrying about soccer and how I could improve individually and get the team to always do better. Perhaps I could have spent more time studying (still graduated magna cum laude miraculously) or enjoying myself as most college students do, but I have no regrets because I enjoyed every minute I had on the field, be it in training, games, or kick arounds with friends during the off-season. I did what I loved and did it in my own style. I learned a lot about soccer and life during my 4 years playing at Nazareth, things I might not have had I gone elsewhere.

Now as an assistant coach, the message I try to send to the players is clear. No other country allows you to play a sport while earning a degree. It is an amazing privilege to continue playing a sport competitively into your twenties without being a professional and sacrificing education. College players are seen as the big shots and campus and with that have a big responsibility to act as good role models holding themselves to a higher ethical standard. I tell the players to have an awareness and an appreciation for how unbelieveable of an opportunity they are given to still do what they love and prepare themselves for a bright future at the same time. Yes, student-athletes do have to make certain sacrifices and have to commit themselves pretty much 24 hours a day, but the reward and the satisfaction are 1000 times greater. It is not always easy getting yourself physically and mentally prepared for another 2-hour training session in the middle of October when you have been going non-stop for over two months, but this is a great reminder to inspire yourself when you are feeling the natural fatigue that hits. Remember how fortunate you are to have this, to be part of something bigger than yourself, and that it will not last forever.

I think I struggled more than most seniors after they have played their last collegiate game. The soccer field is where I always felt free, that I knew what I was doing and could make myself proud. There are no other worries when being a soccer player. Now I would have to figure what kind of career I was going to have, where I would live, if I was going to continue my education, or try and play at a professional level. Problems that suddenly arise out of nowhere. I didn’t like that stress. All I wanted in life was to play everyday. In a way, I would compare playing soccer in college to being a lost boy from Neverland because you enjoy yourself the whole time and I was like Peter Pan, the kid who never wanted to grow up and just do what he liked all day. No one ever wants it to end, but I knew my life would start to change and there was nothing I could do. I am no longer a lost boy. It is time for me to grow up and find new challenges in life, to set new objectives, and to find joy in other things.

This is the real reason why I want to be a soccer coach. Whether long-term I become a head college coach or an academy coach will be for me to figure out, but at least it gives me the chance to be a kid again and spread that passion and love to new players looking for something to give them gratification in their lives. If at the end of a training session I see players that were fully committed and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, then I will know that I did a good job that day. I am incredibly grateful that Nazareth has offered me the chance to launch my college coaching career because I feel I have so much advice and insight to pass on to the next generation of Golden Flyers, the ones that are replacing me. I wish them all the best. I also hope that they cherish the group of lost boys they have found, a group that will now forever be their friends, and that they enjoy Neverland for as long as they can because soon their time to grow up will inevitably come as well.