Coach Eissele retiring after 37 seasons, 660 wins
Bill Eissele, one of the nation’s all-time leaders in girls soccer victories, is retiring after 37 seasons as coach at Lake Mary High School.
He will be replaced by his son Christian, who played professionally across the globe and now owns a Central Florida business training soccer players and teams.
The school was expected to announce the handoff from father to son Wednesday.
Bill Eissele, the only coach in program history, will be moving with his wife to Fayetteville, North Carolina, in September to be closer to their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. He said the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on high school sports, which are still on hold, played a part in the decision.
“I think that was some of it: not knowing what the season would bring this year [or] whether they’re even going to have a season,” Eissele said. “But we’re excited to be able to move to Fayetteville and be there to support the family. We decided we would love to move up there and sold our house very quickly. Things happened very fast.”
Eisselle landed the Lake Mary head coaching position shortly after his graduation from UCF when the school started girls soccer in the fall of 1983. He made the Rams one of the state’s most successful programs during four decades.
He steps down with a career record of 660 wins, 215 losses and 72 ties. That includes state championship wins in 1989, 1998 and 2002, and he ranks No. 3 on the national girls soccer wins list, according to the National Federation of High Schools.
Eissele’s victory total is No. 2 in state history behind Carlos Giron of Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas, the national record holder with nearly 800 wins in 37 seasons.
“Lake Mary was fortunate that Bill chose to stay the course as a Ram. He could have easily been a rock star as a college coach and moved on to the U.S. National Team if that had been his ambition,” former Lake Mary boys soccer coach Larry McCorkle said in a statement.
“He’s exceptional for what he did and the consistency of what he’s done for all those years. It’s truly unique.”
McCorkle, a Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Famer, played a role in bringing Eissele to the school. As a duo they combined to post 1,109 Lake Mary wins.
Eissele’s team was a state semifinalist two years ago, marking the eighth final four in his tenure, and finished 10-5-2 last season. The Rams claimed 12 district titles.
He also coached club soccer, most recently with the Florida Krush Kraze, for more than 30 years.
Eissele was a professional golfer before he became a teacher and coach. He came off a 1981 PGA Tour season to return to college at UCF and did an internship at Lake Mary in the fall of 1982. He began teaching in the spring of 1983 at South Seminole Middle School and became the Rams’ first girls soccer coach that fall in the third year of the school’s existence.
Eissele saw some 150 players move on to college soccer, but he said fond memories will include more than soccer success.
“The biggest thing I think are the relationships,” he said. “It’s such a pivotal part of life, high school. I got to see players come in as 14-, 15-year-old girls and graduate as young ladies. Whether they moved on to soccer or some other endeavor, just to watch them grow is really rewarding.”