USL Feature
Friday, May 6, 2011
By NICHOLAS MURRAY
When the Fredericksburg Hotspur went to find a coach for their inaugural USL Premier Development League season, they didn’t have to look far.
Already the Technical Director of the club’s parent organization, the Fredericksburg Area Soccer Association, Carl Gray brought a wealth of experience to the position as he began to build a squad for the 2011 season. With a mix of players with PDL experience and a younger group of players who had played for Gray in the club’s U20 side last year, the coach is now looking forward to opening the season on Saturday against the Virginia Beach Piranhas at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex at 7 p.m.
“Obviously, I can’t wait,” Gray said by phone. “I’m very excited; I’m very familiar with the Virginia Beach franchise … and [new coach Cesar Rizzo] and I have worked in the ODP program together so we know each other. I’m very excited about the opportunity.”
Gray’s coaching background stretches much further than his involvement with FASA. A club coach who has been part of the state’s Olympic Development Program for many years, Gray was able to call on the relationships he’d developed with some of the state’s top players to bring them to Fredericksburg for this summer.
“I have been a coach in central Virginia now for close to 30-some years,” Gray said, “and probably more than half of the squad we have so far has played for me at one time or another through the Olympic Development Program, club teams, somewhere along the line. I knew a lot of these players and they knew my coaching style, and that gives me the foundation to build the rest of the team on.”
While Fredericksburg is new to the PDL, the Piranhas are now entering their fifth season in the league. There has been some change in their organization for this season, with a new coach in Rizzo who has faced similar challenges to those faced by Gray in assembling a squad for the upcoming season.
“I think the challenge right now is to put the team together as many players are coming from different ways [of playing],” Rizzo said by phone. “The biggest challenge is to have the team playing the style I would like to see, but we haven’t had enough time for that yet.”
Rizzo was an assistant coach for the Piranhas W-League side last season, and comes in trying to help the side return to the playoff form of its inaugural season. Originally from Brazil, Rizzo wants to see his side play attractive, fast-paced soccer. He has also set the team goals for this season, one of which is returning to the playoffs.
“As a team, we will try to have a very good season,” Rizzo said. “Our biggest goal is to reach the playoffs, and after that we could set a second goal to reach the finals, but it’s one step at a time.”
Given the nature of the South Atlantic Division, which also contains strong programs such as the Carolina Dynamo, which reached the PDL playoffs a season ago, and former professional side Real Maryland FC, Fredericksburg and Virginia Beach will find strong challenges from the other sides in their division. But with the proximity most of the clubs share, Gray said he and his players are looking forward to developing rivalries with the Piranhas, Northern Virginia Royals, Real Maryland and the Dynamo.
“I’ve already observed the boys at our practices have been talking about some of their friends or some of the players they’ve played against collegiately that are playing for some of the other teams, so they know they’re going to be getting a very good level of competition which is exactly what they want in a situation like this,” Gray said. “We’re far enough away from one another that we’re not competing for the same players, but at the same time we’re close enough to where we are aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Gray also hopes that the club as a whole, which now has teams from its U6 Academy sides to the PDL and W-League squads, can offer players in central Virginia a pathway through the club and hopefully into the professional ranks.
“I’ve been with FASA for a number of years and it is a superb organization that has a great vision as to where they want to be,” Gray said. “The ability to now offer the PDL and W-League franchise as well as taking our program all the way down to the U6 Academy, that provides us the ability to provide players in central Virginia the opportunity to travel through the whole program with us.”