Double teams

Published 12:01 am Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Many misconceptions surround coaching boys and girls teams at the high school level. Conventional wisdom holds that a coach can be tough and yell at boys, but that girls are too sensitive and unable to handle such tactics.

Shannon Murray is one of a select few local soccer coaches who runs a

boys and a girls program. He’s quickly learned that conventional wisdom does not always hold true.

Murray reached the pinnacle of high school coaching in the first year at the helm of the Glacier Peak boys soccer program. He led the team to a 3A state championship. A year later the Grizzlies took third place in the state tournament.

Buoyed by that success over the past two seasons, this summer Murray added the Archbishop Murphy’s girls team, which has finished no worse than third in the 2A state playoffs since 2004, to his already busy schedule and thus has undertaken the unique challenge of guiding two programs from two different schools with players from two different genders.

In the first several weeks he’s noticed plenty of similarities and differences between the boys and the girls, some of which many casual observers wouldn’t expect.

“The girls are tough,” Murray said. “The girls in some ways are tougher than the boys. They are competitive. They battle and they are mentally as strong as well. I think sometimes they don’t get that credit.”

Kyle Veach is learning the same lessons at Stanwood, where for the first time this year, he will be coaching the boys in addition to guiding the Spartans girls team.

“People want to think (boys) are tough and rough and more resilient and that you can yell at them and they’ll take it like men,” Veach said. “Girls are just as resilient and in that area that’s a common myth and misconception that girls are just going to be weaker and you are not going to be able to ride them hard or get after them.”

Coaching two programs is a unique opportunity afforded to soccer coaches that doesn’t exist in a sport like basketball because the boys and girls both play during the winter as opposed to the fall (girls soccer) and spring (boys).

For Murray, a Marysville Pilchuck and University of Washington alum, the desire to coach as much as possible stems from a love of the game that gave him an athletic scholarship at UW as well as a six-year pro career in the American Professional Soccer League. The last five years he played with the Seattle Sounders prior to the team being dissolved to form the current MLS franchise.

Murray was friends with former Murphy coach Eddie Fernandez — one of the groomsmen in his wedding — and on Fernandez’s recommendation he was asked by the Murphy athletic director to take over a thriving girls program.

“I knew (Fernandez) was letting go of the program,” Murray said. “At the time he let go, to be honest, I wasn’t interested. It didn’t work with what I was doing.

“A couple months later they still hadn’t hired and a conversation came back up and here I am. It’s been a great fit. I’ve really enjoyed it.”

Most high school sports coaches have the challenge of balancing a career and dedication to their team. Since coaching at this level is more about love than money, most coaches need what Everett coach Kosta Pitharoulis calls a “real job.”

Pitharoulis, who has coached the Everett high school girls for the past decade and its boys for the past three years, works to pay the bills at Soccer West, a leading soccer retailer. Murray helps run youth soccer programs and Veach is a part time pastor at Stanwood Foursquare Church.

Even though all the coaches agree that the boys and girls are more similar than many people think, there are unique challenges that mean the coaches can’t use the same hammer for both nails.

“The pace of the game, how you speak to them is going to be different,” Veach said. “How you organize the team where you put people, attacking styles and defending styles are much different. The game is much different.”

The girls on the Murphy team, which is undefeated in its first six games under Murray, have already responded well to their new coach pulling double duty.

“Shannon’s been really great,” Murphy midfielder Shelby Koch said. “Practices are really tough and they seem to be getting us a lot better. Even though we don’t do a whole lot (of variety), the drills that we do really play into the games that we go into and that helps us.”

Administrative streamlining is another advantage, but all the coaches agree that double the teams means they can double their impact on the communities they coach in.

“I absolutely love it,” Murray said. “Being able to get involved in the community, my local community both Glacier Peak and with Archbishop Murphy has been a fun little ride.”