The Best Soccer Team I Ever Coached

Today I had my last two soccer games with the Hotspurs 2008 Boys White team at the 2022 Erie Memorial Day Classic Tournament. We beat FC Pittsburgh 6-1 and then tied Toledo Celtics, the team who went on to win the tournament, 2-2.

Next season these boys will move on to the next phase of our program--The College Prep Phase--with a new coach. I am sad to see them go. The Hotspurs 2008 Boys White team was the best that I have ever coached.

I started coaching youth soccer in 2013. I have always loved the game, but never really succeeded at any notable level as a player. After a few years of playing only pick-up around Pittsburgh and any place where I would travel, I started to yearn to get the game back in my life in a more "formal," organized way. So, I started looking for and picking up some lower level coaching jobs (high school JV team, summer camps, etc.) and was able to use these experiences as stepping stones to something bigger. In 2015, I got a job as a staff coach at Pittsburgh Hotspurs, a classic soccer club based out of Harmar, PA. I eventually became a staff coach in the Boys Youth Development Phase, which included all the u-13, u-14, and u-15 boys teams.

Coaching soccer has since become an enormous part of my life. Over the past nine years, I have coached all sorts of teams: High school JV, high school varsity (as an assistant), u-13 through u-17 age groups, lots of B teams, some A teams, etc.

In order to understand what made the 2008 White Team my "best ever," first, you should know that "white" is our code word for "B team" (whereas "blue" is for our "A teams"). Second, you should know this team's history.

Our teams at Hotspurs play in the PA West "Classic Divisions." To understand what this means, you should probably first make sure that you understand how competitive soccer is typically organized around the United States.

The lowest level of organized soccer around the country is probably "rec soccer," which is an intramural style competition within a town or city likely organized by the town's Parks and Recreation Department. A step above that is "travel soccer," where town/community-based soccer clubs put together teams at different age groups who will travel outside of their town/community to compete against teams from other towns/communities. This is where USSF (United States Soccer Federation) comes into play.

USSF has 90 national state associations within its jurisdiction around the country that organize and regulate travel soccer competition within their respective region. Each state association normally divides their region into "sub-regions," within which community-based teams will compete locally, and then likely also offers "classic" or "premier" divisions--some word to denote elite, or higher-level competition--for "classic/premier" clubs and sometimes even community-based teams who have succeeded at lower levels and want to challenge themselves by "playing up."

In PA West, we have three "classic divisions." Division 1 is the highest. Division 3 is the lowest. The 2008 Boys White team has always played in PA West Classic Division 3. So, in other words, they are playing "classic soccer," but in the lowest division.

Let's look at some old league tables to help you get an idea of where and how this group of boys started.

2019 Fall Season

2020 Spring Season -- Cancelled

2020 Fall Season

2021 Nike Cup, U-13 Boys, Select Bracket

This was the lowest of five brackets in the U-13 Boys Division at a popular soccer tournament in and around Columbus, OH.

These results say everything, right? After two seasons and one tournament, this team never finished higher than last place in any sort of competition with a combined record of 0-1-17 (zero wins, one draw, 17 losses) and a goal difference of -85.

I was assigned the 2008 Boys White Team at the beginning of the 2020 fall season. Like a responsible coach, I did zero background research on this team. (Note sarcasm here.) I never once looked up their past results online. I never once asked any of their past coaches about the team. I just accepted the assignment and started working.

In the middle of the season, I first discovered the challenge ahead of me. We were in the middle of the second half of a game that kept getting worse and worse and, frustrated, I yelled at a player for what seemed to me to be lazy behavior. The coach who ran our phase and has been like a mentor to me, Tom, came over and said, "I don't think yelling at them is what they need right now. They need to be encouraged. It's going to be tough with this group this year. If you look at their results..." And then his voice just kind of trailed off, as if to imply that I needed to go look at the past results myself. So then, after the game, I did, and I realized everything.

There was never any choice but to persevere. I already really liked the kids in this group. Plus, with a B team, as opposed to an A team, it's nice that there is less pressure to win. After more than a year of nothing but losing, the only way to go was up. So, on we continued.

The way we run our phase is really nice: Each coach is nominally "head coach" of a team or two, but we also take turns coaching each other's teams so that no one "coach + team pairing" gets stale and so that the kids can get a variety of exposure to different voices, coaching styles, and ideas. If I had to guess, each team is with "their coach" about 65% of the time and other staff coaches 35% of the time.

As a staff, we just kept doing what we normally do: Following our curriculum and teaching all moments and skills of the game. I participated in this approach, but when I was with the boys by myself--before a game, at halftime of a game, some training sessions, etc.--I probably tended to emphasize defending and pressing more than anything else. I am better at coaching these topics than I am at attacking topics. More importantly, though, these seem to be the most appropriate topics for a team that hasn't won in over a year. It's always going to be easier to improve the actions that occur without the ball because progress can't be slowed by a lack of technical skill. And, in my experience, when you are the lesser side in soccer, the best way to compete is to make the game difficult and chaotic for your opposition through organized, hard team defending and pressing.

The boys bought in! The first moment when I realized this was during a fall season game vs. SCS, a club based in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, when, despite currently losing by three goals, Nate, one of our smallest, slowest players went on an amazing 40-yard pressing run. He was playing center mid, forced his opponent with the ball to pass backwards, advanced to continue pressing, forced another backwards pass, continued pressing, and by the time he forced a third backwards pass to the opponent's retreating center back, was in full sprint. Ultimately, he only forced the ball out of play--No recovery of it or chance on goal created for our team, but the run was symbolic. We were losing 0-3 in the second half with seemingly no chance of coming back. I also hadn't said or shouted a thing from the sideline. Nate's action was natural and self-prompted. He simply decided that he was going to keep fighting until the end of the game, read his pressing cues, and acted on them phenomenally.

Despite signs of change and a winter of good training, here is how we started the spring 2021 season:

1 - 7 Loss

0 - 4 Loss

0 - 8 Loss

And then, one Saturday at the beginning of May, we are, for the first time ever, outplaying an opponent. Still, though, we were playing on a massive turf field and it was one of those games at the U-13 age level, the age group when players for the first season ever play 11v11 on a full-size field, that felt like, because the players still haven't fully learned how to use the space on the big field, it was destined to finish 0-0. That was until, as we were trying to build out from the back, one of our players made a poor pass back to our goalkeeper that the opposing striker stole and finished, and we lost 0-1.

I knew that a win was coming. I kept telling this to the kids. But, I wondered how it felt for them. Were my words just becoming empty promises? I wondered if any of them felt like they just needed to accept that it was their destiny to never win a game.

We traveled to Columbus for the Nike Cup tournament in April, 2021. Of course, we went 0-3 in the lowest bracket of the U-13 age group. But, our final game was symbolic of this group's willingness to persevere and fight through challenges.

By Sunday morning, the second day of the tournament, we were 0-2 with a goal difference of -7. Our final game was against the best team in our bracket. They had already smashed the two teams that beat us the day before.

I rounded up the boys before the game and went into my usual pre-game spiel of how we were up against an immense challenge, how they had to be willing to fight and make sacrifices for each other, bla bla bla. I had made a habit of saying things like this, so of course I feared a day when these messages would start to lose meaning and effectiveness. But then, I asked the boys if they were willing to do this and the response from the entire group was a resounding, "Yes!" "Oh, wow, nice!" I thought.

So, on I continued. I talked about setting our line of confrontation at the midfield line and defending in a mid-block. I offered a few ideas for counterattacking and gave them the "10-second rule," something that I stole from Tom. Basically, this rule says that when we recover the ball, we have 10-seconds to create a goal scoring opportunity, and if we don't, then the player with the ball shoots from wherever he is, we abandon the attack, and all retreat to our mid-block defense. Clearly, it's a defense-first, low-risk approach. I don't really like doing this. Youth soccer is about development--Not chasing victories. But when you regularly lose by five or six goals, damage control becomes an important tactic in order to preserve team morale.

The boys went out there and absolutely killed it the first half. The assistant referee on my sideline turned to me and said, "You must have said something inspirational to your boys." I shrugged. It also helped that our goalkeeper Judah was playing out of his mind--amazing save, after amazing save. The whistle blew for halftime and it was 0-0 against the best team in our bracket, whose average size, by the way, was about 6-inches taller and 20-pounds heavier than ours.

Now, I'm not one to complain about or harass referees. I think that the way many other coaches and parents treat them is despicable. But, I have to say that our referee in this game was a bum. He never broke into a jog once all game! He might have left the center circle two or three times. So, what happened next? Of course, we earn a penalty, but, while the ref did call the foul, he calls the restart a direct free kick outside of the box. (He is 30 yards behind the play--Of course he can't see where the foul occurred.) A penalty would have been absolute gold. Imagine going up 1-0! But, we only received a free kick outside the penalty area, which ultimately amounted to nothing. Five minutes later at the other end, the ref awards a penalty kick to the other team and they go up 1-0. We start to lose momentum and in the last 15 minutes, they score twice from 30+ yards. No one on our team can even kick a ball 30 yards. They end up winning 3-0.

Yeah, the lost stunk, and it felt unjust the way it happened, but the team's performance was a sign that change was on the horizon. Two weeks later, the 2008 Boys White team won their first game in nearly two years 2-0 over FC Pittsburgh. Two weeks after that, they won their second game in nearly two years 2-1 against Meadville Soccer Club at the Erie Memorial Day Classic Tournament. We still finished second-to-last in PA West Division 3 and last place in our Memorial Day tournament bracket with a record of 1-2 and goal difference of -8, but these two victories were finally a glimpse of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel for the boys.

The first training session of the fall 2021 season had started and everyone could tell right away that things were different. There were no smiles, no goofy behavior, no lazy corner-cutting. Every kid was "all business." They were flying through the periods of play of the session and focused and attentive during the coaching stoppages. Lloyd, a coach who had just joined our staff came over to me and remarked about how impressed he was by the group. "Dude, I know," I replied. "This is so good tonight. You have no idea what they've been through,"

Another thing that was really going to help was the addition of Thomas, a boy who had played in the age group's Blue Team the previous season, but who had agreed to move down to the White Team for personal development reasons. From session #1, he was a vocal presence within the team, praising his teammates' successes, but also pushing them to be better when it was needed. The boys instantly embraced Thomas as their new leader and voted him to be their captain.

All signs pointed to this season being the one when the boys would finally turn the corner, start competing in every game, and win more than two games. Except it wasn't. We didn't win a single game (other than two wins by forfeit, which don't really mean anything other than three points because the players don't get to experience the joy of the victory). We even drew 3-3 with the same FC Pittsburgh team who we beat last season to earn our first victory in nearly two years.

Then, when things couldn't seemingly have gotten worse, we traveled four hours to a tournament in Maryland that ended with us losing our last two games (out of three total) 1-6 and 0-7. 

Parents were becoming disgruntled, too. At one game towards the end of the season, one parent angrily confronted our team manager about an unrelated issue that was out of the manager's control in front of the entire parent group. After the tournament, I received a long email listing 6-7 grievances about the club and direction of the team.

It truly felt like things had hit rock bottom. Tom was away during all of this, having to return to England to renew his Visa. When he returned to Pittsburgh in January, I told him that I was worried that the team was going to fall apart.

By now, I've painted a pretty decent picture of the situation, right? It was nearly two and a half years--one before me plus one and a half with me--of losing, some of the losses humiliating defeats. In addition, for the kids, it was one year and a half of being promised better things from me, their coach, that were not coming to fruition.

But if there has ever been a story of perseverance, this is one. These boys kept showing up to training, busting their butts nearly every session, asking for feedback, and responding with eye contact and nodding heads nearly every time that I was hard on or demanded more from them.

The 2022 spring season started with a 4-1 victory over FC Pittsburgh. (This team's coach has always been nice and kind to me, so I hope he would understand if he were to ever read me write that I often thanked God for the existence of his team.)

Next, was a 1-1 tie with North Stars, a team that beat us 6-1 in the fall.

Then, a 2-1 win over Victory SC, which was especially sweet because Jonny B scored the game winning goal with five minutes left in the game.

After that, we lost 1-3 to BVB International Academy of Pittsburgh, a game in which we completely outplayed and created more chances than our opponent. Yeah, it stunk to lose, but for the first time ever, the kids could believe that my praise for their effort and performance in a loss was genuine because we finally had a few wins under our belt.

After the BVB game, a few kids remarked during our post-game debrief that this (2-1-1, with the one loss not being much of a loss in the eyes of a developmental coach) was the best start to a season that they had ever had. "Yes!" I thought, while trying to avoid smiling too much.

That spring season I found out that the 2008 boys would be leaving the Youth Development Phase, the phase at Hotspurs in which I worked, to move up to the College Prep Phase, the next and final phase within our club, a year earlier than teams had done in the past. I was surprised and bummed. I had developed so many strong bonds with boys on both the Blue and White Teams over the past two years. I was really sad to find out that I wouldn't have that third, final year with them. This spring season really was the end of it all.

The 2008 Boys White team ended up finishing the PA West league season in fifth place of a nine-team division with a record of 3-4-1. Technically, it was still a "losing season." And, I can't remember many other times in my life celebrating fifth place. But it was the best season and the most success that this group had ever had. The last game of the year was especially satisfying. We smashed PFC away 7-0. I swear that we had nearly 95% possession of the ball.

It's important that I note that I do kind of resent that so much of this story has revolved around the wins and losses because I don't at all believe that these are the main focal points of youth soccer. Youth soccer truly is about player development. It's just that the wins became symbolic for this group because there was a point in time when they hadn't had any for nearly two years. Throughout this whole time, the players were developing individually, and by the end of it all, playing soccer better as a team than they ever had in their existence.

The last hurrah for the 2008 Boys White team and me together was the 2022 Erie Memorial Day Classic Tournament. We finished in third place in our bracket with a record of 1-2-1 (one win, two draws, and one loss), which ultimately wasn't enough to get us into the finals. It was such a shame. I felt like we actually could have qualified. In our second game against BVB (the same team who beat us 3-1 earlier in the season), we had--no joke--around 90% possession, 5,000 shots on goal (that's obviously a joke), and hit the post twice, only to tie 1-1. In our final game of the tournament, we tied the team who went on to win the whole thing 2-2. (We were winning 2-0 for nearly the entire game until, with no subs in 85-degree heat, fatigue set in and we gave up two goals in the last 10 minutes.) If we take three points from each of those games, we win the group and advance to the final. We were so close.

But, it was okay. We didn't need to win the tournament for it to be a success. The boys had already had their best league season ever. And due to the performances described above, as well as smashing FC Pittsburgh by our greatest margin yet (6-1) while playing down a man for more than half the game, the tournament was a success.

Furthermore, by the end of the weekend, the boys were nearly doing it all--Playing and coaching themselves. I was merely a spectator. They were setting their own line-ups. They were deciding how they wanted to press (mid-block vs. high press). They were running their own pre-game and halftime talks. They--not me--were holding each other accountable on the field. These were amazing signs of success.

And, although they lost to the tournament runner-up 1-6 and only tied the tournament champions, for yet another time, they left a tournament knowing that the teams who played in the final didn't have their most challenging game of the tournament in the final, but actually against the Hotspurs 2008 Boys White team. These boys regularly made themselves pains in the ass for opponents who were "better."

By now, it's all over. We've finished the season, had our end-of-the-year party, and said our goodbyes. The boys are ready to move on. I, too, have decided to take a step back from coaching. I just had a kid and would like to be able to spend more time with my new family.

I'm glad that my final years in this phase of my coaching career were with the 2008 Boys White team. Were they great? In terms of results, no, obviously not. But, are these boys great in terms of the skills and qualities--perseverance, discipline, humility, work ethic, making sacrifices for others, commitment to growth and learning, etc.--that make a successful human? Yes, absolutely. In my nine, humble years of coaching soccer, they were by far the greatest.