Old Saybrook’s Waters goes for 10th title
HARTFORD — The man who has won more games and more state championships than anyone in Connecticut high school soccer history stepped into renovated Dillon Stadium for the first time Saturday.
Steve Waters was here to watch Farmington, the school he guided to nine state boys soccer titles, face Cheshire in the CIAC Class LL finals.
On Sunday, Waters will return with his Old Saybrook Rams to face Canton in the Class S championship.
A victory not only would be his 10th state championship as a head coach, it would complete a sweep in all four classes. No one, best we can tell, has done that either.
Not too shabby for a guy who retired in 2018 after 36 years at Farmington. At least that’s what the newspaper headlines across the state read at the time.
“Everybody was using the word ‘retired,’ ” Waters, 63, said. “I was just moving on. I felt my time was done at Farmington. It was time for a change. I changed my life. I moved down here.”
Down here is the shoreline. He remarried. A real estate broker, Waters said he applied to two other Shoreline Conference teams. They said no. He knew Old Saybrook coach Sam Barnes, and Barnes was looking for help. As an assistant on the 2019 Class S state champions, Waters also coached the Rams’ junior varsity and the freshmen.
After Barnes took a fulltime job with the Old Lyme Police Department, Waters was back as a head coach. And on Sept. 10, when Old Saybrook defeated East Hampton, Waters scored his 566th victory to surpass long-time E.O. Smith coach John Blomstrann for No. 1 in state history.
Waters lost to Blomstrann in his first game as coach.
“Steve is a legend in high school soccer,” said Mark Landers, who had a number of epic battles with Waters at Glastonbury and has eight state titles of his own. “He still has a lot of years left. He’s almost a Jim Calhoun — keep going until he knows the time is over.
“I had no doubt he was going to find something else after Farmington. I didn’t know what it would be. But there was no way he was retiring.”
And how long will Waters continue to coach?
“You ask different people, you’ll get a lot of different answers,” Waters said. “I’m on the downside, the tail end.”
How’s that for vague? He did recently renew his coaching permit, usually good for five years. You bring up a fact to Waters and he tends to give you his opinion on a connected topic.
“If you look back the past few years, more high schools are looking for coaches because of the certification process,” Waters said. “First off, it’s $500. Then you’ve got first-aid, concussion protocol, last year it was protocols for COVID, sexual harassment. It’s extensive to coach high school. When I started, it was ‘Oh yeah, you were a player so go ahead and coach.’
“Now if you want to coach soccer, basketball, baseball, you can do it at the club level and you don’t need all these regulations. There are so many high school coaching vacancies.”
Waters, who played baseball and soccer at UHart, even served as Old Saybrook’s assistant softball coach last year.
“First time I ever stepped out of the soccer line,” he said.
Waters calls the 1986 state champions at Farmington his best team. The group was essentially all freshmen when he arrived, and they left with a 3-1 Class M title victory over Avon.
“That team was attuned to seven different systems of play and could change on a dime,” Waters said.
Class LL. Class L. Class M. Class S. He has seen them all.
“The higher division, the more complete players you need,” Waters said. “When we were having those epic Glastonbury and Staples games, each team needed like 14 players. Glastonbury had like 19.
“You move down a class, you can get away with eight, nine more complete players. A little less in M, unless you’re Stonington which has like eight. In S, you need a handful. Somers had a handful and a half the other night.”
Waters may reach back 35 years for his best team. He only needed to reach back two nights to the state semifinals to pick his most dramatic moment. Sure, this one is freshest in his memory. But the game in difficult weather against Somers was especially physical, especially emotional. Old Saybrook was down 3-1 with 15 minutes left and when Cam D’Angelo, tripped up in the penalty box, scored on a penalty kick with two seconds left to tie it — well, what could be more heartstopping? The Rams won in overtime.
Waters said he even found a new phrase to describe his boys’ play on Thursday night: “Emotionally efficient.”
They kept their poise while remaining ultra-competitive.
“The biggest difference (from when he started coaching) is the ability to compete,” Waters said. “Too many go out to play to play. Some go on family vacations during the season. They don’t know how to compete. They have to be taught.
“My former assistant and I saw this and changed things up in 1999 after we were at a soccer seminar. It all came down to responsibility. I think we were a little ahead of the curve.”
Compete for yourself and your team, he said. Create team synergy to be successful. So how did you go about it?
“You don’t have enough pages in that book,” Waters said. “It is in how you train them, how you present things. My players, when they were freshmen, we were playing to win. So many kids don’t go out and take the world on their own at a young age now. Parents do a lot for them.”
Waters said more kids arrive at the high school level with a better skill set nowadays. Yet with so many club teams — “too many” — top players don’t play against other top players position-to-position enough. They don’t advance as much competitively.
He makes his players responsible for themselves, for their ability to improve, right down to the equipment. If a player leaves something behind, the first player to see it is responsible to pick it up and bring it to the next practice to see whose it is. Team lessons. His 11 this year includes three seniors, four sophomores and four juniors. Great kids, he said, no problems.
“Steve is so prepared and detailed in what he does,” Landers said. “He is amazing in bringing out the competitiveness and mental toughness in his players start to finish. A lot of it is in how fit they are.”
Waters played for Landers’ dad Bob at Wethersfield. Steve and Mark would become great rivals, but also great friends. As we talked on the phone, Waters was interrupted for a second. It was Landers calling.
“We used to scout games together and he’d write everything down in his little notebook,” Landers said. “We’d get in the car and he was like, ‘You think I’m just
going to copy my notes and give them to you?’ I said I had it all in my head. He’d quiz me on the way home.”
We quizzed Waters on a few matters. As a coach for all classes, what is your opinion on the placement of schools of choice — especially in lower classes?
“I remember I was on the boys committee at the CIAC and I told them it’s going to change everything,” Waters said. “They said, ‘Oh, no it won’t.’ I said especially sports like girls and boys basketball it will. You saw what happened with the Capital Prep girls. It only takes a handful to change a season.”
Waters was correct. Does he have a solution?
“No,” he answered. “One thing is when you apply to play up a division, it’s a three-year application. I’d like to see that be two. Everything changes in a school in two years.”
Waters likes the one-site concept for soccer.
“In basketball, the kids play to get to Mohegan,” Waters said. “Everyone knows where it’s going to be. That’s good. I like that.”
He wouldn’t mind a few of those games on Friday night.
Waters said when he was at Farmington it was decided to move up to LL and another time to remain at L. Both time it was a players’ vote. Farmington coach Nick Boorman’s players voted last offseason to move up to LL.
Players’ choice. Players’ responsibility. Coaches’ intensity. Landers said there was nothing but love and respect afterward, but playing against Waters was like a boxing match. Waters liked to tease Landers that when he was little kid at Wethersfield he’d shine his shoes.
“We showed up to the state finals and he kind of joked, ‘Are you ready to shine my shoes?’ ” Landers said. “That night, it didn’t work out in his favor. My shoes were extra shiny.”