From: Ralph Ranalli and Cliff Utstein
Dear Newton Girls Soccer Family,
It’s an exciting time. Patches of grass are emerging from the snow. Daylight savings time is less than a week away. The spring soccer season is approaching fast and many of you already know the teams you will be playing on (and if you don’t you’ll find out soon).
We have some more exciting news to share. NGS has a new Director of Coaching, Shaun McBrien. For those of you who haven’t met Shaun already, he is a terrific young coach who for the past year has served as our Assistant Director of Coaching.
As ADOC, Shaun handled a wide array of coaching duties ranging all the way from running our Kindergarten Intramural Program sessions to coaching Travel and NGS Academy teams. We have now asked Shaun to take on a larger and more important role at NGS, and that is to be a true Director of Coaching.
In that role, Shaun has been tasked to take on a number of vital projects, including:
- Creating a comprehensive, girl-specific coaching curriculum for all programs throughout NGS, focusing on the development of the entire person, not just the soccer player.
- Improving our support for parent coaches including coaching instruction, helpful and easy-to-access resources, and clear, age-specific goals and benchmarks.
- Implementing a club-wide player evaluation system that standardizes criteria for player assessment, tracks each player through her journey through the NGS system, and keeps parents and coaches well informed of each girls’ progress and individual instructional needs.
- Generally helping Newton Girls Soccer be everything it can be.
Taken together, that’s a tall order. But Shaun is well equipped for the task. He’s a seasoned girls coach, having previously served as Regional Director of PTUSA (Paul Turner’s Ultimate Soccer Academy) and Coach of the Crusaders United soccer club. He has also dedicated himself to his own coaching education – he holds top-level US coaching certifications as well as a degree in Sports Coaching and Development from the University of Ulster.
But most importantly, Shaun loves soccer and has dedicated himself to teaching it the right way – as a way to help develop strong, confident girls and gift them with a lifelong love of athletics, team play, self-improvement and work ethic.
Please join me in giving Shaun a hearty congratulations and welcome to his new post.
But of course welcoming Shaun means, sadly, bidding farewell to Gary Beatty, his predecessor as DOC. Gary was with us since 2009, and won over the hearts and attention spans of scores of NGS girls with his gentle sense of humor and his obviously love of teaching and the game. Gary has taken a full-time position as director of the Mansfield Sportsplex, a multi-sport indoor facility owned by BCL Premier Sports, where Gary serves as Sports Director.
Everyone at NGS owes Gary a debt of gratitude for his leadership, friendship, and dedication to the program. He will be greatly missed. But we wish him well in his new endeavor and will be listing seasonal soccer programs at the Mansfield Sportsplex on our new about-to-be revealed NGS website. If you sign up for one, make sure to stop by Gary’s office to say hello.
Meanwhile, think spring and stay tuned for more announcements about the coming season soon. And thank you for being part of one of the best and biggest all-girls soccer programs in the country.
Best wishes,
Ralph Ranalli, NGS President-Elect
Cliff Utstein, NGS President
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