Coach Sam.
Sam has coached youth soccer and basketball across New York City since 2021 — soccer from age 2, basketball from age 5. The fixed weekly class runs Sundays at 10am at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 5, with private and small-group sessions scheduled across all five boroughs the rest of the week.
Groups are capped at 12 kids, so every player gets real reps and real attention — not time standing in line.
Annapolis to NYC.
I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where I started playing basketball at age 2 and soccer at age 4. I played three years of varsity soccer — freshman, junior, and senior — and quit my sophomore year because I was disgusted by my coach. That was a life-changing decision.
I graduated from St. John's College — the Great Books college — in 2022, where I played in men's and coed leagues and received the athletic award at commencement for my commitment to the Athletics Program. I also founded the school's intramural program, which grew into the most-participated club on campus, with over 250 students taking part — more than half the student body. I've been a referee since 2017.
I started coaching kids in 2021 for one of my professors at St. John's. When I graduated in 2022, I was hired by Pelota Training in Annapolis. I moved to New York City in 2024, and after a lot of encouragement from friends, family, and teammates, I decided to go all in on a career I knew I could bring my full energy to.
Why I coach.
I want several things as a soccer coach: I want my players to fall in love with the sport that I fell in love with. When I was 13 and I was squished with my best friend in the behind the seat storage of his dad's pickup truck on our way to play with his dad's team, giddy because we believed in our skills up against the men who we were going to play against, I was truly in love with the sport. Our eyes dazzled with the belief that we could do something beautiful or unlikely or difficult or magnificent, and that we could do it together, because my best friend and I loved playing with each other — that is what I want to give to my kids and everybody that I train.
At around the same time, every year from when I was 11 until I was 14, I attended the Naval Academy Soccer Camp that operated when the famous Dave Brandt was still the head coach of the Navy men's team. One of the winningest soccer coaches in NCAA history, he majored in business in college. Thus, he was a great coach, and also a sly business man — and he knew how to sell us what he was coaching. At the beginning of every 5-day camp, he would say, "I have 5 days with your child. That is not enough to make your child into a good soccer player, or a good player into a great player. But it is enough time to give your child some tools that they will have with them for the rest of their lives." He gave us 4 tools, and I was never the same soccer player after. They were:
- 01Inside-of-the-foot passing"Your foot has to be in a cast."
- 02Opening up.
- 03Taking someone on 1v1 and bailing.
- 04A good give-and-go.
I give my players tools that they will have for the rest of their lives, making them blessings to their teammates and to themselves. My goal is to make it so that people fall in love with soccer and for their teammates to love playing soccer with them.
How Sam coaches.
I don't coach to help my players grow into college or professional athletes. I coach to help them love the game, to endure the difficult moments, to be able to take learning into their own hands, and to learn what being a teammate can really consist of. Ultimately, I want my players to find a lifelong friend in the game — and to be able to enjoy it no matter what their level, at the highest or the lowest.
Reps over drills
Young kids get better by touching the ball constantly, not by standing in line. Sessions are built so nobody waits.
Fix one thing
Each session targets a single mechanical habit. Kids leave knowing exactly what they worked on — and so do you.
Fun is the method
A two-year-old who laughs for thirty minutes comes back. Enjoyment isn't a reward for training — at this age it's how training works.
Praise the effort
Kids get credit for trying the hard thing, not just for the outcome. It's the difference between a player who hides and one who asks for the ball.
I want my players to be great teammates: smiling, hardworking, deceptive, vicious — and they never lose the ball, except when they take risks, and they must take risks. I myself like gentle souls who like to spend an afternoon in a café. But on the field, let my players be nasty, though sportsmanlike.
Rain or shine.
Sam trains year-round — sprint work between sessions, and the occasional soaked-through selfie after a rainy one. Off the field, he plays soccer two or three times a week for fun, reads the Great Books of the Western and Eastern traditions (Plato, Tolstoy, and Zhuangzi are the favorites), and has been an FC Barcelona fan since falling for Ronaldinho as a kid — the Pep Guardiola/Messi era didn't disappoint either. Most weeks you'll find him over a pint or a coffee with friends, talking through a short story. He's also working on becoming a great host and a great cook.
Come meet him.
Sunday mornings at Pier 5, or a private session near you.
