Benefit in Memory of Joe Dadura on March 16

    Friends of Joe Dadura will hold a benefit for his wife, Bobbi, on March 16 from 7 - 11 p.m. at the Washington Square Ballroom, 131 Johnson Road, in Turnersville.

   I wrote about Joe's untimely passing on December 4 in this post.  You can read more about the benefit and how to but tickets or make a donation if you can't attend at this link.  There will be a lot of people there and a lot of fun.

   Joe was nearly killed by a drunk driver while at work in January 2003.  He was never able to work again and because of his injuries unable to obtain life insurance.  This is a chance to do a good deed for a truly deserving person.  I hope all my friends will be able to help.

   Thanks from Coach P!

I "Gess" It's The End Of An Era As Glenn Resigns At Haddonfield

Seems like just yesterday I was on a committee helping interview Glenn Gess and two other finalists to replace Charlie Keil as Haddonfield Memorial High School’s girls varsity soccer coach.  Nine years later I was on the committee to find Glenn’s successor.  (More on that in a future post.)

Coach Gess and Coach P

From a selfish point of view I wish Glenn would stay for another nine years, give or take.  Aside from being a part, however small, of a highly successful program, I enjoyed the time spent with Glenn, who at once is funny, entertaining, athletic, a good soccer guy, a good person and a good friend.  He even put me on the roster as a "special assistant," a title I am proud to hold, although I'm still not sure what it means.

Glenn e-mailed me back on November 7 and tipped me off that he was stepping down after nine years as head coach.  His daughter, Brianna, is an exceptionally talented runner who will be in 9^th grade next year and Glenn said he wanted to be at the cross country meets, and to spend more time with son Derek’s club team.  Both laudable intentions.  Because more than being a good friend and a great coach (in my opinion), Glenn is first and foremost an outstanding family man.  Meet his parents, his lovely wife, Pam, and his kids and you'll see that.

I knew Glenn back when he was the Haddon Township coach because I used to bug him for his roster starting two weeks before the Hawks were due in our stadium.  When we interviewed him for the Haddonfield job, a parent on the committee wondered if Glenn might be a little intense.  “I think Glenn’s intense when he butters his toast in the morning,” said then Athletic Director Phil Smart.  (Phil is now the A.D. at Eastern.)  But he said we were looking for someone to take the program to the next level.  We found that someone in Glenn.

During the Gess era, HMHS was 116-3-3 in Colonial Conference play, with eight championships.  Overall we were 189-18-7 with three State Cups and one runner-up.  Then there were two runners-up trophies in the South Jersey Coaches Tournament.

More important, from my observation, Glenn could push your daughter to be the best she could possibly be on and off the field.  Glenn would tell it like it was from day one each season.   Every girl knew exactly where she stood and the 15 or so best players played the most.  No excuses, no entitlements. 

Aside from being one of the best coaches in the area and an excellent athlete in his own right, I always thought Glenn was pretty funny.  One night several years into his tenure I sat next to him at a dinner at Bob and Sue Heindel’s house and he was talking about the interview process for the HMHS job.  He interviewed first with A.D. Smart and thought it went well and that he would get the job.  But then he got a call that he had to interview with the principal.  So he did, and he thought it went well and that he would get the job. But  then he got a call he had to come back to meet with committees of parents, players, alumni and Coach P.  Only in Haddonfield, he thought.  He said when he applied for the Haddon Township job, “They asked if I knew who Pele was, I said, ‘yes,’ and they said, ‘You’re hired.’”

My favorite Glenn Gess line was from one of our year end banquets a few years back when Glenn told the story of finding his wife Pam’s Cosmopolitan, leafing through it and “I felt like I was reading the other team’s playbook.”  For the record, Pam denied ever even subscribing to Cosmopolitan.

Coach Gess, outgoing Booster Club president,  Sigrid Kiep and husband, Bob.

I would like to say HMHS girls soccer won’t be the same without Glenn Gess.  In way it’s true but in a way things won’t change.  Our committee recommended an excellent candidate whom AD Lefty Banos has proposed to the principal and the superintendent.  HMHS girls soccer will remain in good hands (or feet), but it will be a little different next year.

As I said at the recent year-end banquet, we won before Glenn Gess came, we won a lot while he was in charge, and we will win after Glenn Gess, but I for one will miss having him on the sidelines.  But he promised to sit up in the press box during the stadium  games, so I am looking forward to being entertained once more.

Fashion Statements in The EPL

   Back when my son, Scott, was playing for the Medford Strikers, someone busted on parent Bill Gill, about the hiking boots he wore to a tournament game one wet day.  "I never intended to make a fashion statement at a soccer game," Bill replied, knowing he would have dry feet at the end of the game.

   I'm with Bill, but apparently fashion statements are expected by the managers of the English Premier League teams, as reported in today's New York Times.  In this country, baseball managers since Connie Mack's day have no such worries because they and their coaches in the dugout wear the team uniform.  (No one could ever say why that is.  Best explanation I have heard is that unlike the other sports, in baseball the manager and coaches are routinely on the field.)  In hockey and basketball the coaches dress as if they were modeling for GQ but in American football the staff is usually dressed in team shirts.

    The best quote in the article is: “The top clubs all have designers throwing beautiful clothes at them and the whole world watching them, and still so many of them manage to look cheap and nasty,” said Dan Rookwood, style director at Men’s Health U.K. “They look like middle-management insurance salesmen, not multimillionaire leaders of men.”

   I would be in big trouble if I coached in the EPL because when I was coaching I focused on comfortable.  If it was wet I wore waterproof boots.   If it was cold I dressed warmly.  And the most comfortable attire I could find was the warm-up suit.

Coach P with Bridget Claus August, 2007

   But according to Sarah Lyall, who wrote the Times article, "At the bottom of the heap are those whose no-nonsense track suits and warm-up clothes evoke the crabby phys ed teacher who taught soccer at your high school in the 1980s. These men seem to wish they were playing, not standing on the sideline. They are “the ones that style forgot,” said Jessica Punter, the style and grooming editor of British GQ."  And she goes on to mention Stoke City's Tony Pulis, who not only wears a track suit, but, (gasp) a baseball hat.  Well ,that was me.  As any parent whose kid I've coached, and any opposing coach whose team we played knows, my standard uniform was shorts and a Strikers coaching shirt, warm-up suit when it was colder, and always a baseball hat.  Like Bill Gill, I was never there to make a fashion statement.

You Thought You Had a Long Commute!

   I was exhausted just reading about Clint Dempsey's upcoming travel schedule:

  Monday:  fly from England to Miami, after having played two matches in five days for Tottenham.
                 fly with U.S. National Team to Honduras.
  Wednesday:  Play for U.S. in important World Cup qualifier.
                      Fly back to Florida.
   Thursday:   Fly to London.
    Friday:      Arrive London
    Saturday:   Play mid-day EPL game against Newcastle.

Whew!  I know he's a young, world class athlete, crossing time zones like that takes a toll on the body regardless.  It would be an exhausting schedule if he were spending his time on both sides of the ocean in a library.  Instead, he will have played five matches in 14 days: three league, one F.A. Cup and one international.

   Dempsey's take:  “It is what it is. “Everybody has to deal with these kind of situations, and all you can do is try to take care of yourself and make sure you’re doing what you can to stay as fit as possible for your next game.”

Read the entire story on Dempsey from  today's New York Times.

NWSL Divvies Up The Players

  The third attempt at a women's pro league took another step towards reality when the league allocated 55 national team players from the United States, Canada and Mexico. (The national associations of the three countries will subsidize their salaries.)   According to the official announcement from the league, the players' desires were considered along with the teams' choices and there was an effort to balance the talent among the eight.

  Our old friend, Carli Lloyd, star of the Olympics, is going to Western New York along with teammate Abby Wambach.  Wambach hails from that area but Lloyd of course does not.  Nor was New Jersey's Heather O'Reilly assigned to the local Sky Blue club.  She will be playing in Boston with former Philadelphia  Charge defender Heather Mitts.

  Coach P's favorite Canadian player, Diana Matheson, who played at Princeton, will be with the Washington Spirit.

  The teams will take more shape when the college draft is held

The MLS Debate

It seems that FIFA president Sepp Blatter is not impressed with the progress Major League Soccer has made in gaining a foothold in the American sporting public's hearts and minds.

Blatter was less than complimentary about MLS and the development of soccer in the U.S. in an interview with Al Jazeera broadcast on December 29.  “There is no very strong professional league” in the United States, Blatter told Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara, as reported in the New York Times.  “They have just the M.L.S., but they have no professional leagues which are recognized by the American society.”

Andrew Das wrote about the interview in the Times on New Year's Eve and concluded with his own comments:  "Corner kick: There may be a ring of truth to what Blatter said: M.L.S. is not considered on par with the N.F.L., the N.B.A., Major League Baseball and that other game that escapes me right now in the American sports landscape. But is that a fair comparison, given that the other four had a head start of at least a half-century?"

Yesterday, MLS Commissioner Don Garber responded in Das' column, saying he was "surprised" by Blatter's criticism and that he knows the FIFA chief believes in American soccer and MLS. 

Coach P's take:  it is true that the league’s average attendance last year (18,807) was a league record and was higher than the average crowd for  N.B.A. and N.H.L. games (which of course play in indoor arenas).  It is also true, as Das points out, that the league has nearly doubled in size - from 10 teams to 19 - from 2004 to the present and that a half dozen cities are bidding for a 20th franchise - expected to cost nearly $100 million.  But the game still is not in the consciousness of the majority of sports fans.  It is not part of small talk in elevators around the office water cooler and at parties.  People don't plan their day around an MLS game the way some people do around an NFL game.  When I speak with a business contact in another part of the country, they may open the conversation with something like, "tough to be in Philly these days with the Eagles, huh?"  No one ever asks what it's like going through a sub-par season with the Union.

As Das and other commentators rightly point out, the other leagues have been around much longer and, with the exception of the NHL, were selling a game considered "American."  Soccer for years was viewed as a "foreign" sport.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there.

Farewell, Joe

One of soccer’s best was laid to rest yesterday. 



Joe Dadura and daughter, Kacy.

My good friend Joe Dadura (left with daughter, Kacy) died suddenly Tuesday and yesterday the Egizi Funeral Home in Washington Township became a soccer shrine to one of the best youth coaches South Jersey will ever see, but more important one of the best men South Jersey will ever see.  Joe was a good soccer guy, no doubt, but he was a dedicated and loving family man as well.

Joe and I met years ago when we both took the course for the USSF “F” license, the basic certificate given to soccer neophytes.  (I was given a waiver because of my playing and refereeing background, but the instructor was so good I took the course anyway.)   It was several years later – in the fall of ’91, if memory serves me correctly - when Joe came up to me at Ark Road where our daughters, Kirsten Partenheimer and Jenny Dadura, were on the same Medford Strikers U-13 team.  Joe said he remembered me from the F license course and we became reacquainted – a friendship that lasted 20 years and will never be forgotten.  Later Joe’s older daughter, Kristi, joined the team for a season.

Jen and Kristi left the team after a year or so, Kirsten after the second year.  I stayed on coaching and my son, Scott, two years younger than Kirsten, played for the Strikers, so I was still with the club and later was elected to the Board.  In that capacity I had a call from Joe in the summer of 1993 asking about bringing over a new team he was forming, on which youngest daughter, Kacy, played, to the club.  I enthusiastically recommended him to the Board and the U13 team was accepted.

In the fall of 1994 I watched Joe’s team play a lot – and that season the boys and girls’ State Cup semi-finals were both Strikers-Voorhees.  Boys won, but Joe’s girls lost in a close game.  I watched that semi-final and I could see the potential.  And as the team improved from U13 to U14, it also improved from U14 to U15. 

In the summer of 1995, as Joe’s girls were getting ready for high school, he called one night and asked if I would help him coach the team.  He thought the team had a chance at winning the State Cup the following spring.  (New Jersey plays state cups in the fall for U14 and below and in the spring for U15 and above.)  I accepted, anxious to work with a group of such skilled players and a friend whom I respected as a coach and a person.

The skilled players turned out to be not only that but an exceptionally nice group of young ladies who worked hard on and off the field.  As Amanda Rambo said on her Facebook page, “We were a team and a family.”  Indeed we were – Joe and I used to comment how lucky we were to coach such a motivated bunch and not have any prima donnas or problem parents.  All the girls who finished with us went on to play in college, most at a D-1 level. 

Just a few of the memories included winning the State Cup at U15 by beating the defending champion Voorhees in a shoot-out; coming back to win again at U16; winning JAGS (where for some reason we usually did not play well) at U17; winning the Dallas Cup against a California team; traveling to regionals (where we also struggled for some reason); playing at WAGS every year; going to breakfast or lunch after practice before State Cup games; the college recruiting; watching many of the girls play in college.

I can remember like yesterday standing on the sidelines at Ft. Dix as the 1996 U15 State Cup Final went to a shoot-out and Joe and I just looked at each other, shrugged and said, “Nothing we can do now.  It’s in their hands.”  (Their very capable hands – or rather, feet – as we made all five PKs to win the first of two Cups.)  If any former players, parents or even opponents, want to share any of their memories of Joe, I'd be happy to post them.

Joe and I had a good rapport with opposing coaches from a number of high level teams including Bethesda, Kolping (Cincinnati) and New Hyde Park, Long Island and it was not unusual for an opposing coach or parent to comment what a class act Joe was.  An example was at the Walkill, NY college showcase in November of ’99.  We were talking to a girl from one of our New Jersey rivals who mentioned that a coach from a college in which she was interested would not be able to see her team play but was there for our game.  Joe offered to give her a jersey and put her in the game for 15 minutes for one of our girls who had already committed, just so the coach could see her play a bit.  

We traveled, we played good soccer and we had a lot of fun.  In the 13 years since the team graduated Joe and I talked frequently and always remembered the good times and caught each other up on what our families and the players who were part of our extended families, were doing.  And they did very well.  Most earned their college degrees, some advanced degrees.  Carli Lloyd from our team went on to international stardom in soccer.  Many of the girls are mommies now and I keep in touch with most on Facebook.

About ten years ago Joe was seriously injured in a horrible motor vehicle accident at work.  He made a miraculous recovery and went on to coach another team with Kacy and got to see seven grandchildren born.

The shock and sadness over Joe’s passing was reflected in many Facebook posts, but so too was the love and respect everyone had for Joe.  

Amanda Rambo wrote, “Today was a day of sorrow, but it was also a day to remember someone that meant alot to me and to so many others. He gave me a chance to play on such an amazing team The Medford Strikers (state champ 2x) for so many years. He gave me many memories that will last a lifetime and ill never forget. We were a team and a family. You will truly be missed Mr D.”

Carli Lloyd said, “One of the saddest days ever being at my club coach for the Medford Strikers funeral. I was one of the 5 girls to start and finish with that team. I will forever cherish all the wonderful moments we had together. Thank you Mr. D for everything you did for me.”  She then went to Detroit and dedicated her goal in the 50th minute against China to Joe.

And Quinn Washington remembered the good times: “Mr. D.... remembering all the good times. this man saw something in me when I was rejected from NJ select n started a new team...Medford strikers. Turned a bunch of rejects into state champs twice! Not to mention we ALL went on to play in college. Some of best memories were spent with this team/family. To the Daduras, my extended fam I love u all n Mr.D lives through us all. RIP Mr. D greatest coach EVER.”

            

            You couldn’t have said it any better, ladies.  Mr. D. will always be in our hearts.

            Farewell, good friend.