Meet Publisher #2 - Andy Kaasa
Andy will be contributing to this site frequently in the coming years. He is one of Minnesota's top up and coming young coaches with an eye for young talent, a gift of teaching the game of soccer to young players, and a true passion for the sport. Check out his 95/96G Development Journal here as they work together towards their main goal, earning the right to represent Minnesota at the 2009 USYS Midwest Region II Championships.
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My entrance into soccer was not by my choice. I was dragged to it kicking and screaming by my parents. I was 5 at the time and on my way to becoming an all star baseball player. I already had a sport. I didn't need another one. My parents informed me that I had too much energy to just play one sport and they prayed that soccer would be able to drain enough energy from me 3 nights a week so they could have 3 peaceful nights. They were one for two. I was too energetic to just play one sport but soccer did not drain energy from me. It gave me more energy. I loved it.
It turned out that the parents from my baseball team had worked together to form this plan and I was joined on the team by a couple of my baseball teammates. Our teams would go on to dominate the rec leagues of Central Florida for a couple of years until we made transition to one of Florida's top boys clubs, The Clearwater Chargers.
My parents must have gotten confused by the change because I ended up in St Cloud, Minnesota. My parents are from Minnesota and they wanted to move back. Minnesota was not new to me since I had spent a couple of summers up here at our Lake Cabin, but I found their logic of wanting to move to Minnesota full time a bit off because from all the reports I had heard, Minnesota was quite cold and snowy in the non summer months. Anytime the weather dipped below 50 degrees in Florida we would shut down. Spending some time in Minnesota during the summer was one thing, but now I was going to go live in a state that spent half their year below 0?
In Florida soccer is a fall, winter and spring sport so when we moved up here in the fall I was expecting to play. The only league my parents found was one in Hopkins. So I spent my first fall traveling back and forth from St Cloud to the Twin Cities. (A foreshadow of things to come.) After that first fall . . . and winter . . . and what seemed like most of the spring soccer finally started in St Cloud. I couldn't believe how little they played up here.
After playing in St Cloud for a couple years I went in search of something more. While there are many athletic players in St Cloud there is no coaching to further the game. There are many players who love playing up there and I improved a ton because there was a group of us from all the different schools who would get together almost everyday to play when the weather permitted. We even had one spring break where we shoveled off a soccer field so we could play during our week off from school.
I hit the internet searching for the try-outs of any good club I had played against and I decided I would try out for the St Paul Blackhawks. At the age of 16 I finally had my first professional coach, Aaron Tilsen, and I could instantly tell the difference that it made. I always thought of myself as a decent player, but I didn't realize how little I knew about the game. While with the Blackhawks I got to travel all over the country and I had a great time doing it. Every tournament we went to my mom would make me go to the historical sights of the area (The Alamo, Lyndon B Johnson Library, Mackinac Island, ect.) At the time I wanted to just hang out with my teammates at the hotel or at the golf course, but I came to really enjoy these trips and I try to have my teams take in more than just the tournament and hotel on every trip I can now as a coach.
* * I was one of the first kids to leave the St Cloud Youth Soccer ranks in search of something more, (I may have been the first because I didn't know of anyone to talk to or find out of anyone else who had done it after I did it,) and I was not sure how people in St Cloud would react to me leaving. I'm not saying that I was going to be a huge loss for St Cloud, but I wasn't sure how my friends would react to me choosing to go play with someone else. Either way I didn't hesitate and I had already made up my mind that I was going to leave and I was ready for anything that came with it.
It turned out that kids don't care who you play for as long as you are the same person they knew before you started playing for someone else. I still hung out with my friends all the time and we still played almost every day of the summer together. After I left, a couple of other players started to play their ball down in the cities also. Having players play in the cities helped to raise the overall level of play in St Cloud and it made our High School programs better. * *
The summer after my senior year of high school Aaron offered me a job coaching for Alan Merrick's Soccer Camps. I really enjoyed working with young kids and I was fortunate that first summer to work with a couple of great coaches Greg Wheaton and Chris Scanlon who I learned a ton from.
After that first summer of coaching Aaron, offered me the U16 TC Fire second team's head coaching position. It was a trial by Fire . . . literally. The Fire had two teams at this age group and having been on a second team once before as a player and had a great season, I didn't think much of the issues that come up with the parents (mainly) and sometimes the players. I would soon find out that all second teams have players/parents who feel their kid should be on the top team. (I already knew this but I didn't think people could hold a grudge about team placement for an entire year and let it affect everyone else on the team) I also realized the comparisons that are always made between the second team and the top team. (As a kid growing up I did compare myself to other kids and teams but I did it to find out how I could get better, not as a way to complain and put myself or them down. Maybe it was naive but I thought people knew that not everyone is equal, especially in athletics, and you should concentrate on what you can do to make yourself better.)
I could tell that the girls on my team were improving each week and most of them appeared to be having a really good time. But as the summer wore on and we won very few games while the top team was on their way to winning the league the parents who were only involved in sports for the water cooler bragging rights started to drag the team down. I was able to learn a lot from this experience, like proper league placement is crucial because winning and losing does affect team moral, and despite some of the hard times I found I really enjoyed coaching.
After that first summer of coaching I began my college career at the University of St Thomas. I loved college. All the AP Classes I took in high school helped make my transition into college classes a breeze. Everything seemed easier than high school. Well everything except calculus. How am I supposed to understand two foreign languages at the same time? Math and Chinese. There should be a rule that if the class is not designated as a foreign language class, the teach has to speak the same language as the students.
Anyways, my first year of college soccer was a fun one. I got to play a lot but there was one draw back to me playing. I didn't have a jersey. The program didn't have enough jersey's for everyone so before each game the coach would tell me whose jersey I should use. As a freshman asking a upper classman or even a senior for their jersey was an awkward situation. It did create some fun moments with the fans at Macalester one game when they were yelling at me the entire game. Only I had no idea all their abuse was aimed at me because instead of yelling out my name, they were yelling out the name of the inured player whose jersey I had taken. I like it when fans are creative in their taunts of me or my teams but I thought it was a bit low of them to continually berate an injured player. Towards the end of the game when I figured it out they were yelling at I made sure to beat a player in front of them and inform them of my real name.
During my freshman year, the legendary Denzil Lou, the man who started the soccer program at St Thomas, was in his last year as a coach. Becoming a coach at a young age had put many ideas in my head of how things should be done with the teams that I was playing on and it would put me into disagreements with my coaches at times. One time, towards the end of the year, Denzil pulled me aside and said in his deep Jamaican accent, "Andy. I know you not always agree with me and I'm going to start you anyways. But I want you to realize that I can still teach you." With that statement he taught me more than I could have hoped for from an entire year.
After Denzil left I got to experience what a lot of college soccer was like at that time. Bootball. Tackle hard. Run fast. Send the ball long. It didn't fit me or our players. We could have been so much better. Playing this way only strengthened my belief that my teams would always try to play a fluid passing game that was built for quick, skillful, and creative players.
I continued coaching while I was in college and my next couple of teams were a mix of younger kids playing up with older kids at the U14 age group. Since the Fire did not have a rec program or city program providing us with kids each year I had to find whatever kids I could who wanted to play soccer year round and sometimes this meant 12 year olds playing with 14 year olds. Despite the difference in ages I had found a core group of players and parents who enjoyed the year round training and I coached this mixture of players for 2 years.
In the fall of 2005 I had two younger players on my team who approached me about playing with Mark Abboud's U11 team in Woodbury for the fall since we did not have a fall team. One of these players was a very talented U11 player and the other was a dazzling 8 year old who spent the whole summer deaking out goalies 6 years older than her. Some coaches hate losing their better players to other teams, but I was excited that I was able to help these girls get involved in such a great opportunity. That team ended up winning the 2007 Region II Championship.
During the following summer I followed the progress of my two former players in the newly formed Bangu Tsunami East Academy and at the USA Cup I kept bumping into Mark as we were looking for players in similar age groups. We kept talking and he offered me a U11 team for the coming year. This presented a mini dilemma since I was already committed to coaching a TC Fire U12 team and I had only coached with the Fire. I didn't know how this would sit with the Fire's Club President Aaron Tilsen. So I sat down and told him that I would like to continue coaching my new U12 team with the Fire but I also wanted to coach with Bangu because I had felt that I could learn a lot from working with Mark. Aaron gave me his blessing and I thanked him for helping me get this far in my coaching career. Some people may have issues with him, but I have never had any issues with him and I have learned a lot working with him.
That same fall I was offered the JV Coaching position at Mounds View High School. I had thought about taking other High School jobs but I was lucky to choose Mounds View and I am currently in my 3rd year there as the JV coach. I took the job for 3 main reasons: 1)Sharon and John Swallen were the coaches at Mounds View and I knew I would be able to learn a lot from both of them. 2) The schedule was perfect. Training was from 2:30-4pm so I would be able to continue working with my club teams during the fall. Plus Sharon and John were flexible with me going to out of town tournaments. 3) One of my college roommates went to Mounds View and he was always talking about how great Mounds View was in all their sports. He won a basketball state championship there and multiple track state championships. While I enjoyed my HS experience n soccer because I got to play with my friends, I thought HS soccer was not very good in a lot of places. I didn't want to coach at a school with no hope of success . . . Especially if I was not going to be the head varsity coach. Under Sharon and John, Mounds View is a perennial State Tournament team and I wanted to be a part of that.
Bangu Full Time
In the fall of 2007 I became a full time Bangu coach. I had learned so much working with Mark over the last two years and we had watched the Academy more than double from 4 teams in the East when it started in 2005 to 9 teams in the East this fall along with Academies in the South, West and North.
My goal with the Bangu Academy is to help develop ideas and training techniques that will give players the opportunities and situations to become the best in the nation.