Keys to the Coop, Part 2
Coaching, community, balance send Hawkeyes to Final Four
Cooperstown (19-0) will play Alexander Hamilton in the Class C boys soccer semifinals at 2:15 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 13, at Middletown High School.
Yesterday and today I will give some opinions on what makes this team so good. Friday night or Saturday morning I hope to have a final four preview up as a subscriber exclusive. However, this weekend’s game stories (and 75% of our content overall) is free to email subscribers or to website viewers. So, please tell your friends, and if you enjoy our coverage of Cooperstown varsity sports, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
3) The Balance
A longtime Cooperstown soccer supporter and I have had a friendly, on-going conversation about who is the best player on the team. I almost don’t want to mention it, because I don’t want to start anything, inside or outside the team. And so I will skip the details of our conversations and go to the punchline: we have come to no conclusions because it is impossible to pick one player.
Cooperstown has five players with 10 or more goals and four of them have five or more assists. Obviously, that makes it hard to shut the team down. Someone is going to get free and beat you. If it isn’t Luca Gardner-Olesen on a cross, it is Colby Diamond dribbling through traffic, or one of the Spencer brothers, Liam or Aidan, shooting from outside the box. Or it is Ollie Wasson, my evergreen candidate for most improved player.
I almost titled this section the midfielders, after all there are few teams that are going to have a better midfield than Colby, Liam and Aidan. However, even in the lines, there is balance. The defense has saved the day many times this season. Keeper Finn Holohan has been great. The offense has been productive and you can see next year’s starters beginning to shine when they pick up minutes.
Still, I take note of my conversation with Greene Coach Rick Tallman last week. He told me he thought the regional game would come down to who controlled the midfield. Greene was a great team, and the midfield was their strength, but as soon as Tallman said midfield, I knew it was advantage Coop.
I also note our endurance. We are getting to the point where about six of the starters either play the entire game or only get brief rests. The inside defenders rarely come off the pitch and although the midfielders and forwards often get brief rests, there is no doubt our endurance wears other teams down. There have been few second halves where I did not think we had an advantage in wearing the other team down.
2) The Community
It takes a village … to make soccer champions and we are very blessed to have such great support for youth sports in and around Cooperstown. The Clark Sports Center is an amazing resource for a small town and village to have. The Cooperstown Soccer Club is filled with dedicated volunteers. The other youth sports are also thriving. The fans and school community are super supportive.
We had a great travel program and the soccer-first boys now play for a select team in Albany and neither of those things happen without dedicated parents putting a lot of miles on their vehicles and giving up a lot of weekends and nights to make long road trips.
I talk a lot about Dr. Matt Spencer and what he has brought to the club as director of coaching and the “soccer academy” style program he designed for his sons and all the club kids. However, I was also thinking about all the other wonderful coaches our kids have had in soccer. Here is my best recollection of my son’s coaches, as well as other coaches who may have had the older or younger boys in this group. I apologize if I left anyone out, but I am happy to update this list.
Rec and travel: Austin Bruno, Justin Grant, Andrew Hage, Bob Hassman, John Hodgson, Sheri Holohan, Greg Klein, Debbie LeCates, Ron Lytel, Will Nicolson, Phil Sell, Matt Spencer and Shawn Sumner.
Modified: David Peplinski.
JV: Jeff Snyder (older boys), Matt Hazzard (past two seasons).
Hat tip to our CSC club presidents during this time, Matt Grady and now Bob Hassman and all the club officials who volunteer their time and efforts. Special shout out to Alicia Chase, who is the unsung hero of any group she belongs to and served the soccer club long after most or all of her kids had left the sport.
Further acknowledgement to Hazzard, who has now had an assistant’s hand in Final Four teams in girls and boys basketball (both state champs), baseball and boys soccer. (Is there any doubt he is going to have success at Herkimer CCC?)
And also acknowledgement to assistant coach Lucas Spencer, who is a former goalie for Frank, and also his heir apparent with the boys soccer program. It has been fun to watch him coach his nephews and it will also be fun when his son, Hayden, and nephew, Declan, get their turn at varsity.
Even beyond coaching, Frank, Lucas and Matt are so good with the kids. I know as a parent I am thankful they are looking out for my son.
Which brings us to …
1) The Coaching
I first met Frank Miosek in 2011 at the Pat Fetterman Award ceremony. He said he had seen me around at sports events and asked if I was the new writer and sports clerk. He introduced me to the other coaches at the table and I got a lesson in Cooperstown sports history. I remember going home and saying, “I think I made a friend today.”
Since then, of course, I have learned so much more about his history and what he has meant to the area. Frank is a Fetterman Award winner, for his work in youth sports. He has already been inducted into the Tri-Valley League Hall of Fame and his 1991 boys soccer Final Four team is in the Cooperstown Central School Athletic Hall of Fame. Before working at Cooperstown, he coached girls soccer teams at Cherry Valley and Cherry Valley-Springfield to three state titles. He has also taken the baseball and boys soccer teams at CCS to Final Four appearances.
Still, whatever I could say about Frank, it pales in comparison to what his players have to say. He has coached about 40 years of teams, has compiled 1,000-plus wins, dozens of titles and helped shape countless lives. And as we all note, Frank is now coaching the kids of the kids he coached when he was starting out.
So, former reserve soccer player and Coop Sports contributing writer Chad Welch gets the final word:
“He loves the game, loves his players and his leadership helped our program be successful for so many years.
“He is the reason there are Legends of Coop Soccer and an alumni game everyone wants to come back and play.
“He brought it all and us all together, like a lifelong brotherhood and he is in the middle.
“No doubt every former player wants these kids to win as bad as we wanted to win ourselves.”
