Question: How long have you been teaching at McLean?

Answer: I believe it’s been 12 years that I’ve been here

Q:Who are the people you have known for a long time?

A: Cassidy Slavik, Sinead Eskeen, Cayla Davis, Hannah Alexander, Both Kimberly and Elizabeth Zhou, Maria Purcell, Lindsay Blum, Kendall Robertson…Nina Otto, Rose McCullough, Shannon Stockero, and Zoe Skoric was also involved. That’s most of the ones I’ve had since they were really little, there’s been, there’s a whole bunch of others that I’ve been related to peripherally, and then a whole bunch of them at Langley as well. It’s probably the most of them, I don’t want to leave anybody out.

Q: How have you known them?

A: I’ve been coaching soccer for just as long as I’ve been teaching here at McLean, all of those girls were on teams that I coached, a lot of them were on teams that I coached for a very long time so I’ve known them pretty much throughout, and then one of the teachers here got a job because I was her soccer coach when she was little, Mrs. Person, her maiden name is not Person, it was Adams, and she played for me for a long time in Braddock Road, and we like we were very very close, we maintained like she came to my wedding when she was like thirteen she was on my team, and then I went to hers when she got married a little bit later on and then she was working at Stafford County  and she’s just always had this incredible work ethic, I could be more specific about that, but like incredible work ethic and she’s been an incredible motivating person her whole life and so when I found out there was a P.E. job here I told her ‘jump on this’ and of course she got a resume together and got in, she did the rest, she’s great. I’m biased but she’s awesome.

Q: What are your feelings on some of your former players graduating?

A: Well it’s actually incredible, I mean it’s really cool, I have Cassidy in class and the team that Cassidy was on was very very good, like we were, that’s credit to them not to me, they were just excellent hard-working group, I mean you know Cassidy’s a division one college, she’s gonna go play lacrosse I know, but and Sinead is an amazing athlete, and the two of them together combined with a bunch of the Langley kids we had, they were just exceptional, they were very very good. The other ones, you know, Cayla, Hannah, they came on to that team too, I had Hannah and Cayla in class last year so it’s just so surreal to see them as little kids who were just these awesome soccer players to turn into these awesome people, you know, these amazing young adults who now i can really relate to and just have a tremendous amount of respect for …Lindsay will probably end up playing soccer somewhere if she so chooses, Kendall is already signed somewhere, that team was actually ranked number one in the country for a long time yeah so we were way way up there … [it’s] just really cool to have that kind of connection with kids who are so young, you get to see them grow up, you know and you never really lose touch with them.

Kendall is really really funny, when she was little she had these bangs these straight bangs, and for whatever reason I couldn’t get her on my team right away because she tried out late, but she was clearly great. So she was actually starter on the second team, she started on our second team, and every once in a while we would have to play them and i would always be like you gotta stop Kendall, we really gotta stop Kendall, we gotta do something to slow Kendall down because she’s just that kind of athlete you know she’, she still is, I mean she’s remarkable, so its just really neat to see them grow up. In fact, when they were really little they signed this [wardrobe] back here, a whole bunch of them, we still make fun of it, we still joke about this. So Kendall’s probably ten, or nine when she wrote this, all the kids who played for me, you can see some Langley kids over here too, were invited to sign this, they would come in and we would have like team building sessions in the schools, and this is still like an inside joke between the two of us, she wrote ‘you’re growing up so fast,’ she’s ten and she’s talking to a man who’s 36, and I’m like Kendall, what does that mean and she goes: ‘I don’t know i just panicked i had to write something and it’s the first thing that came to mind,’ so that’s a throwback to when she was a really little kid.

So I guess what I’m saying is it’s kinda cool to know kids in two different ways, to know them outside of the class room and to see them grow up and just sort of constantly be around them , have all these sorts of memories.

Q: Are there any other stories you would like to share?

A: I guess, there was this one incident and I guess it is probably the best because it involves Cassidy and Sinead, we were just talking about it the other day in class, and I believe Hannah and Cayla were there too, Hannah and Cayla joined the team a little bit later… I can’t remember if they were on the team or not, but something that’s sort of indicative of both [Cassidy and Sinead’s] personalities. We  were playing this team, and they were excellent team and we were a very good team, and we had a really good relationship with them but you know it was a fierce rivalry, and we were playing them in I believe it was the finals of a tournament, and Cassidy was in goal and Sinead was always on defense, we kind of knew…that we’re not gonna have Sinead for very long because she was such a good swimmer …and so the referee was at the mid line, and this girl, there was a corner kick and they, they’re was a mad scramble in front of the goal, Cassidy’s flying all over the place, Sinead’s flying all over the place, we’re trying to clear it, and the referee calls a coal, but he’s out by the mid line you know and I’m like ‘how can you call a goal from there like you’re not even near it how can you see if it went over the line or not,’ and Cassidy we were just talking about it in class the other day, and Cassidy’s like ‘I swear that ball never went in, the ball didn’t go in , I saved it and we cleared it out,’ but Sinead came up to me after the game, back then and was like ‘I saw the ball, it did go in,’ so it’s just kind of neat Sinead ‘s always been like really honest, kind of quiet, person and she still to my knowledge is,..and Cassidy’s just this relentless competitor, like even if the ball had crossed the line’ Cassidy would be like ‘no it didn’t’ she just , not that she’s dishonest she’s just that kind of competitor, he’s just would never sort of concede defeat if she didn’t have to, she still swears it didn’t happen, so that’s what i’m going with. I’m saying it didn’t happen either.

Ms.Person, was the best player I had on the team that she played on with me. She did this thing where, she was asthmatic, but she was so driven to play that when we would do fitness drills if she was having asthma trouble, she knew if I heard her like wheezing that I’d make her stop, she’d hold her breath and sprint by me so I couldn’t hear her struggling for breath which of course made it that much worse when she got to breathe again because she couldn’t breathe.

We went all over the place together, Kendall, Lindsay and I in particular we went down to North Carolina together up to Pennsylvania together, won all of the tournaments we were in. We didn’t lose a game for three years so they were pretty intense, we were always together. Great kids.