Lower Merion Soccer Club - 30 Years Coaching At LMSC

Sam Holt	I first met Sam in 1985 at Delco Select tryouts. Sam was selected to be the Under 10A Delco League Select head coach and I was selected to be the Under 10B Delco League Select head coach. During the next three years working with Sam, I learned a lot about coaching. He convinced me to not coach the way we had been coached (we had the same high school coach, though he is 15 years older than me). He showed me a lot of new ways to run training sessions, taught me a lot about organizing tryouts, etc. Sam showed a tremendous passion for developing players' technical and tactical skills so that they would become top notch players when they were older. The Select team he coached for many years would form as a club team four years later and become the first youth team in Pennsylvania to win a national championship. From Sam I learned an immense amount about player development and setting long term goals in terms of each player's overall development.
Ed Hochreiter	Ed was the head of Gladwyne Soccer when I first got involved in coaching in 1982. He helped me get started in coaching, showing me how the club was run, how the leagues ran, how our state association ran, etc. In my second year of coaching, Ed convinced me to take the 'E' level coaching course being run by our state association. While taking that course, I learned a huge amount about so many different things: team management, coaching methodology, running effective training sessions, etc. I originally thought that taking the course would be a waste of time since I had played soccer at the college level and "already knew the game." Ed convinced me that the course would not be "learning about soccer" but rather about "learning how to coach soccer." Ed's leadership and guidance in the early years gave me a good direction and a lot of confidence with regard to coaching teams and coaching young players.
Joe Hopkins	Joe moved into Lower Merion Township around 1987. He had coached soccer before and wanted to coach in our club. Joe quickly became an officer in our club and took over running the boys travel team program, as well as many other aspects of the club. Joe had a pheonominal business sense and was always looking for ways to restructure something so that it could run better. Joe was never satisfied just letting things "run as they have always run." Joe was responsible for our separating the soccer part of Gladwyne Sports Association from the rest of that organization. This allowed us to devote all resources to the soccer operations and more effectively build up various programs. In 1989, his U-9 Dragons won LMSC's first state championship. The next year, my U-13 Gorillas won the club's second one. Thanks to Joe, we were constantly overhauling programs and making things better. Our club's membership began to grow, we offered more and more programs to the community and LMSC began to become a big part of many people's lives. Obersving Joe's excellent leadership and business skills, as well as his vision and ability to change and improve things were great lessons for me.
Karin Sturla	As I got to know Karin in the early 1990s, I learned a lot about the human side of young players, their emotional needs, the complicated relationships between parents and players, etc. Karin was a psychotherapist who really understood how people operated from an emotional point of view. I began to better understand the emotional and psychological component of not only players but also the parents of the players. She also helped me to understand the emotions driving me to wanting to coach. I am the child of two alcoholic parents and grew up in an extremely disfunctional environment. Being on soccer fields as a youth was a huge part of my life and a "safe place to be" much of the time. Through Karin, I began to understand all that a lot better and it greatly helped me to better deal with players and their parents. Though she and I are divorced now, we remain best of friends and she helps run several different LMSC programs today.
Brunco "Chick" Ceccarelli	When I was first coaching at Gladwyne Soccer, Chick was running the rival Wynnewood Soccer Club. In 1988, we began to discuss merging the various local organizations (this included the Penn Valley club and the Narberth club). During these meetings, I got to know Chick well. He was a tremendous ambassador, was able to organize people and get them to work together. When we finally got the clubs to agree on the best way to merge everyone into one club, Lower Merion Soccer Club, it was obvious that Chick should be club President. He had been coaching for many years and his Wynnewood teams were very successful. Chick was great at settling disputes between people, especially when it concerned upset parents of players. He was a tremendous liason to both the Lower Merion Township and the Lower Merion School District. This helped us to better establish ourselves in the community. His diplomatic skills and ability to bring people together were tremendous and I learned a lot about this through my many years of working with him. When he stepped down as club President in 1999, I considered it an honor to be able to take his place.
Steve Blumenthal	Steve was my assistant coach with the Gorillas from 1986-1991. Like me, he did not have any children in the program at the time. He was simply a former college player who wanted to give back to the soccer community through coaching. Steve played for Penn State who were nationally ranked. He brought a high level knowledge of the game to the players and as they got older, Steve's influence on the field grew. He had been well coached as a youth and brought a lot of great coaching ideas to our team. But, there was one phenominal bit of coaching philosophy that Steve bestowed on me and it has been an unbelievable help to me over the years. When the Gorillas were younger, I would try to get them psyched up to win big games. I took great pride in our team's results and I've always hated to lose. But, Steve noticed that I got the players so hyped up that they would almost go into a state of paranoia. They would tense up in big games and play scared of making mistakes. After losing a huge state cup game in 1989, Steve sat me down and talked to me about this. He told me that the players were already motivated. I needed to instead present a calm, confident and relaxed appearance in front of the players. He assured me that they would be more relaxed and ready to go out and play. It was the best advise I was ever given. The next year, our team won the Indoor State Cups, Outdoor State Cups and Delco League division one championship.
Marty Rubenstein	Back around 1995, I remember receiving a lot of intramural registrations with players requesting to be on Marty's team. Everyone always had high words of praise for him as a coach and as a person. I met him a few months later and realized that he was a person with a lot of passion for ensuring that youth players were having a great time while developing as character people. In 1998, Marty replaced Joe Hopkins as club Director and Vice President. Replacing Joe would be a difficult task. Marty would be an active board member at LMSC for a dozen years. He had a very low key, warm personality that made everyone feel at ease and happy to be on a soccer field. But, behind his great personality, he was always prepared for a battle if necessary. Marty's training as a lawyer helped our club to handle many difficult business and political battles. He always made sure we were well prepared to deal with any situation. He would organize the club directors and make sure we had an excellent plan to deal with anything. He did this with a cool, calm manner, even though there was a tremendous competitive fire deep inside him. His care about the players in the club was top notch and he made sure that everyone involved in running the club had EVERY players' best interest at all times. Marty stepped down as club Director in 2010 after 15 years of valuable leadership. His three children, Lee, Robbie and Megan all played or are playing at the college level.
Jay Dubow	Jay joined the LMSC board in 2002. Similar to Marty Rubenstein, Jay is a lawyer with a tremendous business sense. He was extremely committed to making sure that the club was run in a professional manner. Jay has devoted a lot of time for the past 10 years to the club and has ensured that the club is run properly as a not-for-profit organization. Jay has tremendous mediating skills and has helped ensure that arguments and conflicts are resolved in a fair manner, consistent with club policy and in line with corporate law and ethical standards. Jay continues to serve as a Club Director even though his children are no longer involved in the club. His commitment to youth soccer and the players has been a great asset to LMSC and has helped teach me the importance of running the club as a (not-for-profit) business in the best way possible, with the best interests of the players in mind.
Charlie Dodds	I first met Charlie in the mid-1990s when he signed up for a coaching course that I was the instructor for. We became good friends right away. He would serve as my assistant coach at Conestoga for three years before he took over as head coach at West Chester East. Charlie later offered me a job at Rocket Sports (now YSC Sports) and we worked together, sharing the same office, for 11 years. Charlie has a tremendous business sense and is a great business person (quite amazing because he was a very mediocre student in his younger days). He built up Rocket Sports into a tremendous soccer facility where thousands of players (youth and adult) would play each year. I learned a lot about the business side of sports from Charlie and many of my business philosophies today come from Charlie. He and I have coached against each other many times (he is now the head coach at Marple Newtown High School which is in the same league as Harriton). We've had some classic games over the years and they always had "bragging rights to the office" on the line. But, no matter how intense our games were, we'd always sit down the next day and have a great laugh about everything that took place. Charlie, more than almost any coach I know, will go the extra 10 miles to help any young soccer player that he knows. He's always willing to sit down with young players and discuss college options, job opportunities, philosophy about life, anything. He truly loves the kids he coaches. One of Charlie's other great qualities is player evaluation. He can watch a player play for 10 minutes and know right away if the player is talented, destined for greatness or destined for mediocrity. It's scary how accurate his predictions and evaluations are.
Bob Urban	When I first got involved coaching in 1982, Bob was already established as a legend in youth soccer. He ran the Nether Providence Club which was by far the most successful club in the 1980s. Their club would put out the best teams, they were well coached, very professional and played great soccer. Many of those players would go on to play at Strath Have High School which won many state championships. I spent a lot of time in my early years trying to find out how the Nether Providence club was run and what Bob Urban was doing to make it so good. I got to be good friends with several of the Nether Providence travel team coaches and wound up playing on an adult team with many of them for many years. I would always pick their brain about what the Nether Providence club was doing to make them so successful. When I had the chance, I would talk to Bob and ask him a lot of questions. He gave me a lot of insight into how a top notch club should be run. I used many of his ideas to try and make LMSC a stronger club. Bob's biggest quality however was simply a burning passion to do things the best way possible and ensure that all aspects of his club were operating up to his standards. He would never cut corners and he would not let people in his club cut corners. Bob passed away several years ago, but his influence on youth soccer in southeastern Pennsylvania will be around forever.
Ed Weiss	Ed was my assistant coach with the Hammerheads from Under 9 through Under 15. He never played soccer and was by no means a soccer expert. But, he always kept things fun for the boys and kept everyone's spirits high. He always kept me in line whenever my expectations for the boys got out of hand and always reminded me that no matter how successful our team was, it had to be fun for everyone or things would fall apart. When the boys were Under 12, our team was ranked # 1 in the nation by National Soccer Rankings. That was a huge burden and sometimes I would try to push the boys too hard to keep it that way. Ed would often talk with me after a game or a practice about any player that was struggling. We would discuss ways to motivate the player or ways to ensure that that particular player was having fun and fitting in with the rest of the team. Both Ed and I loved the team and enjoyed being a part of their great success. What Ed was best at however was giving me the occassional reminder that the game belonged to the kids and it had to be fun in order for the team to succeed. He'd remind me that these boys didn't need to be motivated much, they were naturally motivated and very competitive. We'd always laugh at how competitive practices were. The boys would go at it so hard in practices that game days would seem like a picnic.
Mike Barr	Mike was head coach at Strath Haven high school back in the 1980s and 1990s. I always enjoyed driving down to Media to watch his teams play. They were well coached, played with energy and passion and played very entertaining soccer. Mike also ran our State Association's Olympic Devleopment Program (ODP). I got to know Mike in the early 1990s when I began coaching in the ODP program. He had a lot of great ideas about player development and team development. His knowledge of the game was tremendous and I tried to pick his brain for as many coaching ideas as possible. I began coaching high school soccer in 1995 and always considered it a thrill to have my teams play against his Strath Haven team. Over the years, we would have some great games against each other. Mike continues today as the Director of Coaching for EPYSA, our state association, and I often take time to talk soccer with him when I can. He has a lot of great ideas about how programs of all types should be run. We've had some great conversations on many topics: club structure, player development, coaching philosophy, you name it. And, after each conversation, I come away feeling I know more about the game than I did before the conversation.