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“I wanted to be the parent that dropped my kid off, showed up on match day, and then complained after the game about all the mistakes the coach made,” said Fletcher Corbin. That was never going to happen. All it took was one rainy day on a soccer field “helping out” another volunteer coach for a recreaction department soccer team of four- and five-year-old kids to remind him of why he loved the game. I stopped and reread that last line. A day spent in the rain on a soccer field with four and five-year-olds would definitely not inspire me to go back for more. Who was this guy? To find out, I began with the line that follows every good Southern introduction. “Where are you from?” Home for Fletcher, I learned, was Savannah, Georgia. Growing up, he played everything from baseball and basketball to football and soccer at Windsor Forest High School. He also played soccer with the Windsor Forest Athletic Association. “This was in the mid 1980s,” said Fletcher. “It was like what we call club soccer today. My coach was from England. He didn’t want us to call him coach, so we called him by his name, Mr. Moon. He took us to play in tournaments throughout the Southeast coastal region from South Carolina to Hinesville and into Florida. He was really the one who helped develop in me a love for the game.” In 1989, Fletcher went to Brewton-Parker College (BPC) on a soccer scholarship and played on the school’s first soccer team. While there, Fletcher met his future wife, Paula Sharpe, at the college pool. “I started talking to her, and things progressed from there,” he said, his eyes
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