Alexandria — To the Editor:
This past weekend the T.C. Men's Soccer Team won the state championship for the first time in school history. With a 2-0 win over the Washington & Lee Generals, the 2014 Men's Soccer team will go down in school history as one of the best athletic teams ever. For many Titan soccer alumni, including myself, a former player and coach, this championship has been a long time coming. The foundation for this win has been built over decades, beginning in 1981 by head coach and high school math teacher Marty Nickley. Coach Nickley consistently fields a competitive team though, more importantly, is known throughout the region for the sportsmanship and work ethic that he instills in his players. In a fitting tribute to Coach Nickley, the Titans also won the Sportsmanship Award at the state tournament and the Washington Post named Coach Nickley the All-Met Coach of the Year.
Playing for a Titan soccer team means being held accountable. Coach Nickley treats all of his players — from his star players to those working to get playing time — the same. He expects players to show up to practice every day, if a player misses a practice, he doesn't start the next game. The way one carries himself on the field is important as our student athletes represent not only themselves, but the high school and Alexandria. Cursing, for example, is not tolerated and results in a place on the bench. In an environment where too often coaches are friends with their players and let bad behavior go, Coach Nickley earns the respect of his players by expecting more. A quiet and humble man, Coach Nickley coaches for all the right reasons — his players. The lessons he teaches them prepares them not only to compete on the field, but to be successful off of it in the classroom and then in college, the workforce, and the community.
The T.C. soccer team is one of the most diverse you will find; in the years I coached at T.C. Williams, I had players from over 20 different countries: Africa, South America, Central America, the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were all represented. Depending on where one grows up, soccer is taught differently and strategy and approach vary. While the Titans regularly play against high schools with players who are much more homogenous and have played organized, select, and Olympic Development soccer for years, at the beginning of each season Coach Nickley must blend a diverse group of players to come up with their own unique brand of soccer. Many of our players work throughout the year — it was not uncommon during the seasons I coached for players to leave practice to go work a night shift or to have to chip in to pay rent at home.
Titan soccer teams are normally larger than your typical squad because Coach Nickley would rather have students on his team, practicing during the week, than having nowhere to go after school lets out. And his teams are consistently the last to be finalized as he hates to have to let a player know that he will not make his team. In fact, Coach Nickley will have long one-on-one conversations with each player that doesn't make his team, helping that player think through what recreational or club team they might be able to play on or what other spring sport might be an available option. And, for the enthusiastic players who have passion to stay with the club, they often become team managers. This is in contrast to many other teams in the area that simply give players trying out bibs with numbers printed on them and when it's time to cut players, post a list of which bib numbers are cut and which make the team; this is the antithesis to Coach Nickley’s approach to mentoring young men.
While there are often debates between the quality of coaching in high school and club soccer, Coach Nickley never engages or lets on to anyone that he actually walked on himself at the soccer powerhouse William & Mary, where he started every game for four years and graduated as an All-American. He simply coaches. When teams compete for playing space in Alexandria and want to play at the best and most well groomed fields, Coach Nickley for years has been more than happy to be relegated to practicing at "Death Valley," the field behind Hammond Middle School given its name because of the lack of grass and ample supply of dirt and uneven terrain. For Coach Nickley, this is the best field in town: it gets his players away from the distractions that come from playing around other teams and students and in a place where they can train hard and focus.
When folks talk about Titan Pride, they are talking about the kind of community that Coach Nickley creates with his teams. Throughout the seasons, whether he has had winning or losing teams, his methods and approach have stayed the same: hard work and respecting one another are keys to success. Sometimes those are hard lessons for a 17-year-old to learn when they don't always win and, many times, end up losing to teams that aren't held to the same standards. That's what makes this championship that much more rewarding, and while the Alexandria community should be very proud of Coach Nickley and the team's success, we should be even that much prouder of how they arrived at it.
Clark Mercer