October 6 - 12, 2009
COMMUNITYNEWSPAPERS.COM
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Youth coach Lou Confessore beat U.S. Soccer by 12 years BY RICHARD YAGER “US Youth Soccer, the nation’s largest youth sports organization, celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2009. The Game for All Kids! exploded from 100,000 players in 1974 to over 1 million in the early nineties. Today, US Youth Soccer registers over 3.2 million players annually, ages 5 to 19, through 55 US Youth Soccer State Associations.” — US Youth Soccer news release • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • When it comes to youth soccer, no one knows the game better than Kendall’s Lou Confessore. Now marking 47 years of coaching smallfry soccer, he began coaching the sport 12 years before formation of the first nationwide youth program in California in 1974. Today, Confessore, Coral Estates coach for its Under-6 and Under-8 boys teams, confirms what few in youth soccer may realize — Coral Estates is the oldest private soccer club in MiamiDade County. “I should know; I started the program in 1962,” said Confessore, already enshrined in both Florida State Soccer and Florida Youth Soccer Association halls of fame for his near half-century of devotion to popularizing and coaching the sport. When Miami-Dade Parks director Jack Kardys christened three new Kendall soccer fields in September, he introduced Confessore as a Kendall soccer legend. “Well, yes, Jack would have said something nice like that,” Confessore recalled. “After all, I coached his father,
Coral Estates Coach Lou Confessore watches a one-on-one drill by Jaiden Barrios, 5, (left) and Javier Marmolego, 6. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
the late Walter Kardys, in youth soccer.” Kardys said, “Lou and my father were both coaches in the first soccer leagues formed in Miami-Dade County. My father was a coach for Norwood Soccer Club while Lou was at Coral Estates.” Confessore, at 72, still teaches tots two afternoons a week at Coral Estates Park. “You just grow to love the sport,” the coach explained. “At Adelphi College in New York (where I grew up), I was really a lacrosse and football player. But the school needed a ready-to-play soccer roster to kick off its schedule in September, so a lot of us were ‘recruited’ to play. I was on defense.”
After graduation in 1960 with a teaching degree, Confessore came to Florida, joining his relocated family in Dade County and coaching at Hialeah’s Recreation Department. In 1962, he started a life-long career, teaching physical education at Coral Park Elementary School, located sideby-side with Coral Estates Park where he introduced the sport and founded the oldest Miami-Dade regional soccer club. Married soon after coming to Miami, Confessore said, “My mother pushed me into it; she wanted me to meet a girl (Harriet) at church; she had come here from St. Louis, a soccer stronghold, so
that worked out just right.” Settling in the Village of Kendale, the Confessores’ children would later carry on the family soccer connections with two sons, David and Steven, as well as daughter, Carolyn, playing on youth teams. “David’s still on an adult team and Carolyn’s two children, our grandchildren, are playing on Homestead teams at age 5, but Steven, a police officer, figures soccer might not work out with his job responsibilities.” From 1968 to 1977, as one of the “old guard Miami soccer coaches,” Confessore helped create the varsity sport at Coral Park Senior High, one of several schools building successful programs based on a feeder system from active youth leagues. “Soccer grew in popularity here because at that time, basketball wasn’t a big sport in Miami,” Confessore explained. “It filled a gap between fall football and baseball in the spring.” Serving from 1977 to ’81 as president of the Florida Youth Soccer Association, Confessore saw local and state youth leagues steadily expand in Florida at a time when only three Miami-Dade parks had regulation soccer fields. “Some still say soccer hasn’t grown that significantly, but back then, we had 25,000 youngsters playing,” he reflected. “Now, we have 125,000 youth, statewide. Last year, in the 15 to 18 age group, we had 32 leagues in MiamiDade. This year, there’s 40 with 55 active coaches.” Will he ever retire? “I thought I would by now,” Confessore said with a laugh. “But the kids keep me going.”