Pfeifer taking his wins ... and legacy ... back to Moon
The winningest girls soccer coach in Pennsylvania history has found a new home — albeit one he’s already very familiar with.
After spending one year at Central Valley in 2020, Bill Pfeifer is returning to Moon for the 2021 season, he confirmed to the Post-Gazette last week. Pfeifer has spent the majority of his coaching career with the Tigers, having previously coached at the school from 2001-17.
“A month or two ago after school ended, I did a youth camp up there,” Pfeifer said. “I walked in the locker room — they didn’t change much in a couple years. Same bulletin boards were up. The gear was there. Some of the kids I knew from junior high when I was still there.
“I thought it would be a little bit unfamiliar or I would be uneasy, but I felt comfortable when I went back.”
In 25 years of coaching across five different programs, Pfeifer holds a career record of 445-80-21 and has four WPIAL championships and three state titles to his name. He helped guide the Tigers to back- to- back WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A titles in 2016 and 2017, putting together a 51-1 record over his last two seasons with the team before moving on to coach at Hopewell in 2018.
For the first time in his legendary career, Pfeifer failed to lead his team to the playoffs in 2020, as Central Valley stumbled to a 4-8-1 record and missed out on the postseason. Pfeifer said a number of factors were to blame for the team’s subpar season, and by the end of it, he just felt like it wasn’t the right fit for him.
“I liked the kids. I had some kids on the team who played club for me. But the fit overall, it just didn’t feel right,” Pfeifer said. “Nothing bad happened. But you go somewhere and things just don’t seem right. It’s a small community, a tightknit community. People know everybody. And I’m a little bit of an outsider there.”
Missing out on the postseason was a hard pill to swallow for Pfeifer, who helped resurrect a downtrodden program at Hopewell in two seasons with the Vikings from 2018-19. He led Hopewell to a WPIAL championship appearance in 2018 and a 12-3 record in 2019, but numbers kept dropping at the school, and Pfeifer decided to take the job at Central Valley, in part because it was so close to home.
Still, although he lives only a five- minute walk away from Central Valley High School, he said he never felt at home during his lone season with the Warriors.
According to Pfeifer, the only reason he ever left Moon in the first place after the 2017 season is because he was dealing with some health issues in his family, and he didn’t think he would be able to devote enough time to the program. He then came back from his shortlived retirement just before the 2018 season when Hopewell athletic director Donnie Short called him and told him the team was in desperate need for a coach.
“They needed a coach. There were no expectations. It wasn’t like at Moon, where it was kids who trained year-round,” Pfeifer said. “The kids [at Moon] all play club. The program needed attention. It was basically a 12-month position. … [Hopewell] was a good fit at the time. And it was closer to home.”
Now with his family’s health issues in the rearview mirror, Pfeifer believes he’s ready to once again take on the yearround commitment required to coach at a program like Moon.
The Tigers are coming off another successful season in 2020, finishing in second place in Class 4A Section 2 and advancing to the WPIAL semifinals before losing to Butler, 2-1, and finishing with a record of 9-4-2. Pfeifer said he expects big things from his trio of senior leaders this upcoming season in Madison Felton, Lizzie Hoff and Mia Shaver.
“It’s a young team,” Pfeifer said. “We’ve got the three seniors, so this group will be together for a couple years. They all played at a high level in the offseason. They’re focused, they know what they want, and as long as we can stay healthy, we’re going to be in the mix at the end, where we should be.”
And although Pfeifer has made a habit of hopping around from team to team in recent years, he seems confident this second stint at Moon will be the last stop on his own personal coaching carousel.
“This is it,” Pfeifer said. “It felt good to walk out of the office underneath the bleachers and then onto the field. I had done that how many times over 17 years? It felt right.”