Stephen Parente || back to coaches list

U9 Boys East Assistant Coach

Playing Experience
I started playing soccer when I was 16 years old and was captain of my soccer team at Walpole High School in Massachusetts. I have been playing soccer sporadically ever since then, mostly in university intramural leagues and town adult leagues in Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Stockholm, Sweden. As my high school coach had never played soccer, I did not acquire a good sense of the game until I played intramurals in graduate school at the University of Minnesota. There I was fortunate to be surrounded by great players from South America and Europe. These teammates really taught me the ins and outs of soccer, and I also learned that developing into a good soccer player can take its sweet time and is a combination of perseverance and having tons of fun.

Coaching Experience
My coaching experience began in the late 1980s. As a graduate student, I coached several teams for the Minneapolis West Side Athletic Club. I started out with a girls u12 team in need of learning everything from basic ball skills to fundamental rules of the game. Although my goals for this team were simply to teach the basics while having a blast, in doing so the players improved both as individuals and as a team and went on to have a winning season. This first coaching experience taught me two important things, first, that if kids are having fun, learning comes easy, and second, that mental and emotional components of coaching play an important part in individual and team development. After turning around the girl’s U12 team, I was given a boy’s U14 team that ended up shocking everyone by finishing in 2nd place in the Minneapolis fall league. Currently, after many "parent-child" coaching sessions in my backyard as well as helping out wherever needed in the Urbana park district soccer program and LISC, I am very excited about officially joining the LISC coaching staff.  I recently received my NSCAA National Youth Diploma.

Coaching Philosophy
I believe that if kids are having fun, development of skills will follow. I also think it is very important to emphasize the positive steps individual players make, even if minor. Each child needs to feel good about him or herself as an individual player as well as a part of the team. I would like young players to improve their ball skills and learn that soccer is a team game that requires the use and coverage of the whole field. I have never been a flashy player, so I think it is valuable for kids to understand that even if they cannot bend it like Beckham, they can be highly effective as part of a team unit. Most importantly, I want to keep the focus on that the game of soccer is just that -- an incredibly fun game.