Trieschmann Named Girls Soccer Coach of the Year

The accolades continue to roll in for the members of the Granby Memorial High girls soccer team.

Several players - including Gabby Dixon (All-State, All-NCCC), Sara Eckhardt (All-NCCC), Ellie McDougall (All-NCCC) and Caroline Wutka (All-NCCC) - have been recognized for helping their team go 17-1-1, winning the NCCC league title for the first time since 1988 and advancing to the state Class M title game.

So now it’s the coach’s turn, as Gerry Trieschmann was named Classes M/S Coach of the Year by the Connecticut Girls Soccer Coaches Association.

It’s an honor that Trieschmann said that he didn’t expect.

“In 21 years, I never thought that I would receive something like this,” he said in a telephone interview. “I’ve seen other people get it and think, ‘I have so much respect for him.’ To get it myself, it’s like, wow...It’s a great honor for me. I’m pretty excited about it.”

Not that you can get Trieschmann, who was also named the NCCC coach of the year as well, to talk about such things.

“I don’t like self promotion,” he said.

Instead, he credited the girls he coached as the reason for why he was presented the award.

“You don’t get this honor or privilege without the players I had,” he said. “It was their effort, desire and passion. Their work ethic was second to none. It was my girls who got me to this point. I accept this honor on their behalf.”

His players, on the other hand, credited Trieschmann for their successful campaign.

“We’re really excited for coach Triesch because he hasn’t gotten too much recognition over the years because we weren’t as good,” Dixon, one of the team’s four captains, said Wednesday evening. “He has a passion for the game. At the banquet we were talking about how a team starts with the coach.”

Coach says it’s players, the players say it’s the coach. A happy chicken and egg conundrum if there ever was one.

Regardless, Dixon said that it was Trieschmann who refused, despite his players’ pleas, to change the team’s formation from a 3-4-3 (three defenders, four midfielders and three forwards) to a 4-4-2 (four defenders, four midfielders and two forwards) prior to the crucial game against eventual state Class L champion Avon High on Sept. 20.

Trieschmann actually relented a little, allowing the players to experiment with the 4-4-2 in practice.

“It was terrible,” Dixon said. “It was a mess. [Trieschmann] said, ‘I’m not going to tell you I told you so, but...’”

Granby Memorial stuck with the 3-4-3 and wound up winning 1-0 and eventually capturing the NCCC crown.

But it is more than Xs and Os that makes Trieschmann successful, Dixon said.

“He knows how to calm us down,” Dixon said. “One time before practice we were all really tense he threw in a tennis ball and we played with that instead of a soccer ball. It relaxed us. It was an honor for the team and him. We’re really proud of him.”

It hasn’t always been easy for Trieschmann, who recalled one of his teams going 0-14-2 about a decade ago. To give an idea of how rough that season was, in the last game of the year, one of the players was carried off the field on the shoulders of her teammates after scoring a goal. The team had lost 5-1, but it was the first goal, and only, goal of the season for the Bears.

Next year will bring about new challenges and new goals, as the team bade farewell to a talented crop of seniors. Trieschmann said that at the team banquet this year, he challenged the new captains to bring what the four captains from this year - Dixon, Wutka, Eckhardt and McDougall, brought in terms of leadership and intensity.

“They were absolutely amazing,” Trieschmann said.