SCV coach earns AYSO recognition
Soccer: Joe Madick nominated for AYSO Coach of the Year
There are many coaches that not only coach at the high school level, but also in recreational leagues. When they are in the high school offseason, they continue coaching to keep learning more about the game, learn how to improve their coaching styles, or because they love working with kids and being a part of their growth and development.
Saugus boys soccer assistant coach Joe Madick is one of the many and on Nov. 24 was named an American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) Coach of the Year nominee.
“I’m pretty honored, it’s a pretty good organization,” said Madick. “This nomination is just for Santa Clarita so I think what happens now is between the 10 hubs that AYSO United has in Southern California, they will pick one that will be the national nominee.”
The coaches and managers within the Santa Clarita Valley chapter voted for the three they felt deserved to be Coach of the Year and whoever had the most votes earned the title.
“We have about 28 teams in Santa Clarita, which is the most in Southern California. There is one coach to each team, one manager to each team and most teams have an assistant coach, so everybody was able to vote,” said Madick. “The way the voting system goes is that they can name up to three coaches, the first coach would receive a certain amount of points and the next has a certain amount of points and so on.”
Out of the top three, Madick earned the top spot in the voting and found out during a meeting that he had been a nominee.
“It’s a pretty humbling experience and I’m honored to be voted through the coaches and managers at AYSO,” said Madick. “I found out I won the nomination from Santa Clarita during a coaches meeting on Sunday night and they posted the other nominations from the other hubs.”
The next step is for the 10 hubs to select the Southern California nominee who will represent them for the national voting. According to the AYSO United website, the national coach of the year will be announced at the AYSO United Technical Workshop in January.
Madick coaches the SCV Boys ‘04 White team and made significant contributions to AYSO in
the process that he believes contributed to his nomination. He started coaching this team in 2016 and last year was their first year as a club team.
“I think it’s just how I am with the players. I’ve been coaching a long time and I just took on this club team a couple years ago and the kids that I grabbed were kids that got cut from other coaches, other club teams and they just wanted to play competitive,” said Madick. “We kind of made an agreement to work hard and all their work ethics kind of led to other coaches seeing what our team was doing.”
Madick worked not only with his own team but also started helping others out after the coaches saw the work ethic that he instilled in his team.
“They came out and started asking if I could work with their teams and I think everybody just followed chains of how I associate myself with the players,” said Madick. “I just do a lot of community service work, volunteer my time and go out and support our players and our other coaches. I know a lot of coaches would call me during the year, talk to me about their games and I’ve built a lot of relationships.”
Madick played with AYSO as a kid and loved what the organization was all about. Their philosophy was a major part in his decision to coach for them.
“For me, this philosophy that AYSO has is a good philosophy and it works for me. It’s something that I grew up with,” said Madick. “I grew up playing AYSO as a kid and I don’t have any kids so when I started coaching AYSO, it was one of those things that I just saw that it was by volunteering and not anything else but developing our player, which is one of the most important things. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how good you are, it’s about development.”
Being able to coach is a major part of Madick’s life, whether it’s coaching his AYSO team or coaching for Saugus High School and it is moments like these that make it all worthwhile and all the more memorable.