But otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot that took place on the field Thursday at Houston High that would indicate it was a big night for Mustangs soccer coach David Wolff.
Act like you’ve been there before? Wolff has; seven hundred and ninety-nine previous times.
With a 3-0 victory over the Eagles in their season-opener, Wolff — the dean of Shelby County high school soccer coaches — reached 800 career victories. That total combines coaching both boys and girls, something he has done on the local varsity level since 1996, first at Ridgeway High and for the last 19 years at Houston.
It easily makes him the winningest soccer coach in the area and one of the best in the entire country too. Wolff has a total of 14 state championships and in 2017 he guided his girls to one of the best prep seasons ever in Tennessee, regardless of the sport. That year, Houston went 25-0 and was crowned national champion by USA Today.
“People think you get wrapped up in wins and losses,” he said in a conversation leading up to the match. “The only reason I know is because when USA Today named me national coach of the year, they needed me to provide them with my record. So I had to go back and add it up.
“In the back of my mind I’m like ‘can I get to 900? Is it possible to do a coach Peters where you get to 1,000? I would say the likelihood of that happening is probably not great.”
Wolff was referencing Jerry Peters, the late and legendary basketball coach at MUS who was on the sidelines for nearly 50 years and won 1,001 games. In a way, Wolff has already surpassed him; with girls playing in the fall and boys in the spring, Thursday marked the start of his 54th separate season.
It started all started very inauspiciously. A native of Los Angeles, Wolff began playing youth soccer at the age of 5. As a teen, he moved to Texas just as the sport was beginning to gain a tentative foothold in the Lone Star state. As an adult, he moved into education and moved to Memphis where he met his wife Cindy, a noted local journalist.
“I’d been through Memphis once before,” he recalled. “This is funny; when I was a kid, I’d watch football on Saturdays. The ticker on the bottom would say ‘Ole Miss’ and I’d say, ‘oh, they misspelled it. They don’t know it’s O-L-D. I had no knowledge of the deep South until I moved here.”
And no desire to coach.
“I was in a faculty meeting and they said they were going to start a middle-school soccer team and did anybody have any knowledge or want to (coach)?,” he said. “I looked around and I was like (as he tentatively raises his hand) ‘I can.’”
That was in 1994. Ridgeway made its varsity debut in 1996 and Wolff won his first state title with the Roadrunners the following year.
Wolff got his first high school job because he was willing and he knew the difference between a striker and a strikeout. He’s stayed on at Houston for two reasons; he’s been successful and the school has allowed him to create a culture of excellence the best way he sees fit.
Houston’s older players mentor the younger ones. They get good grades and get into college — some earning soccer scholarships. They’ve trained with English giants Manchester City and run on the beaches of Florida with the same trainer who trained Tom Brady.
This has been accomplished with a lot of fussing and cussing, tough practices and even tougher love.
Wolff is self-aware enough to admit there have been times when he might have gone overboard and pushed too hard. In those moments, he’ll come back and apologize. Houston isn’t for everyone but if a player is willing to be pushed right up to that line, he or she will most likely be successful.
“The people that play for me and their families have given me the ability to coach in the manner I want to coach,” he said. “They don’t ... they’re not always going to be (in agreement) with the decisions but they trust me in that way. In a society and a culture today where it’s easy to be — I don’t want to say canceled but it’s in that realm.
“A lot of people think kids are soft but I think that’s absolutely not true. I think there are things that need to occur for a kid to maximize their potential. There’s becoming a massive gap between the haves and have-nots in athletics and the kids who are willing to push themselves will be at that (high) level.
“But if they aren’t willing, you’re going to get a lot of — not average — but just kids that look back and say ‘man, I could have done more.’ ... If I was coaching to make everybody feel good, then yes. You’ve got the wrong dude. But if you really want to maximize who your kid is, you’ve got the right place.”
All that considered, Thursday’s match didn’t register all that high on the Wolff-Richter scale.
His tone barely got above conversational in the early going, as Houston gradually asserted itself. His reaction was muted when Ben Farabee opened the scoring with nine minutes left in the first half and it was even more muted when Clayton Somogyi made it 2-0 just before halftime.
Wolff finally cracked a smile with about two minutes left when Manu Monserrat — Houston’s talented senior transfer — returned to the sideline after making it 3-0. As a game, this one wasn’t really much in doubt after the first few minutes.
“That’s a lot of heart over there,” said Wolff of Thompson after the game. “For him to come over and play this game ... he’s one of the best coaches in all of Shelby County.”
Off the field, however, there were signs. This was no ordinary game. For starters, Houston athletic director and Wolff’s good friend, Chad Becker, would never wear a white tuxedo straight out of the “Saturday Night Live” collection.
“White is for celebrations,” he told a group of students. “Black is for funerals.”
Wolff was nimble enough on his feet to avoid the worst of the post-game Gatorade bath a couple of his girls attempted. He received presents, a T-shirt commemorating the occasion and a high-quality steak; he’s recently taken to eating a carnivore diet.
It’s fitting that Houston’s girls team played a big part in the occasion. Wolff’s 2022 team reached the state championship game, losing in the final to a strong Bearden team that ended the year undefeated. Had things gone a little differently, that one —instead of Thursday’s game — would have been the milestone.
There’s a part of Wolff that wishes he could have gotten No. 800 then. He had a special kinship with last year’s girls team and is a fervent champion of Title 9 and the opportunities it has provided for females in sports across the board over the last 50 years.
“I coach my girls teams like guys have been coached in the past,” he said. “You look at all the great coaches who have coached women in the past, whether its (former U.S. women’s national soccer coach) Jill Ellis or Pat Summitt or Geno (Auriemma), they actually go at it harder and there’s some real dialogue that’s going on there.
“But for guys teams, you’re sort of afraid that you might say the wrong thing. H... Click here to read full article
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