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Nov/Dec issue #73
By Andrew Coppolino, photo by Michael Ruscigno
“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Vince Lombardi
Sports are rife with cliches that distill complex issues into simplistic kernels of truth. But the Vince Lombardi cliche just doesn’t work when you apply it to the Vaughan Azzurri Girls 88.
Under the guidance of Gerry Gentile and Mike Ruscigno, the 2006 OYSL U-18 champion Azzurri girls have just completed their last season in which they were ranked number one out of 150 competitive teams in their age group, and they represented Canada in Barcelona at the Academy World Cup Championships this past summer. The team – players, parents, coaches – acknowledge that they have accumulated a lot of hardware en route to defeating many highly talented women’s teams.
Very simply: they’ve won a lot of soccer games in their time.
But they’ll tell you that their’s is a history neither about victory on the field, nor the hardware in the trophy case that comes after. Winning is certainly not everything: in fact, it’s just a by-product of the team’s success.
Valuing the experience and not the result
The Azzurri girls have had remarkable success in Ontario. They have travelled extensively and found success there as well: San Diego, Ft. Lauderdale, philadelphia, New York, West Virgina, Barcelona. Did they win each time out? No; they won most of the time, but that wasn’t the point in the minds of the coaches.
It was about widening perspectives, experiencing different cultures, bonding with team-mates, meeting head-on the unknown challenges of intense competition, and, as Gentile says, “learning to value the experience rather than the result.”
Canada or Spain: if youth soccer ought to be dedicated to teaching sound fundamentals and strategies – as Gentile and Ruscigno have been – it should also have as its touchstone the ideal of maintaining a positive soccer culture regardless of the score. The Vaughan Azzurri Girls 88 are a model for building just such a culture where no matter what the score, you can always win.
Building Character
And while they’ve won just about everything under the hot soccer sun, the players recognize winning means more than three points. In fact, the team succeeded in part because it refused to emphasize winning: Gentile says, “we evolved to a point where we no longer worried about our record and where we finished in the standings.”
Instead, the 88s dedicated themselves to the concept of the team, to perserverance and tenacity in the face of a challenge. They set goals and worked hard toward meeting them. They were all about building character.
In doing so, Grace Goulding says she and her Vaughan Azzurri daughter, Rachael, have won in ways she could never have imagined. “I’ve watched her develop into a well-trained soccer player and an amazing young woman, but the biggest factor making this a ‘winning’ team was the understanding among parents and players that character was the most important quality.”
Victories add up to nothing
Nine Azzurri girls have obtained soccer scholarships in the United States. For her part, Rachael, now at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, easily separates the 88s unique soccer culture from simple winning.
“When you think of soccer, you think of a game – 11 v 11 – trying to get a ball into the net. Rarely do you think of chemistry and sacrifice for the team. Well, that’s what Vaughan was.”
“Victories don’t add up to the lessons I have learned from these coaches. They have given me the opportunity to travel to places I would have never imagined, and the opportunity to grow as an individual, mentally, physically, emotionally.”
“Soccer is not just a game to me. The team was my personal growth, the tool for my future, and the important experiences along the way while gaining life-long friendships in the process.”
Rachael’s team-mate, Melissa Migliazza, an 18-year-old Humber College student, didn’t recognize the depth of the soccer culture she was being steeped in with the Azzurri until she took a year off:
“I felt empty. It was the worst summer of my life.”
“Being part of this team, this family, was an amazing experience. There was tremendous importance placed on team-building activities. The great travel opportunities opened my eyes, and I gained a lot of independence and learned about taking care of myself.”
In one key way, the culture of the Vaughan Azzurri and its team of parents and players – all of whom she trusted implicitly – even “changed my way of thinking,” says Migliazza, whose goal now is to become a nurse.
“There were life lessons. The team helped me learn that I want to help as many people as I can.”
Developing a deeper soccer culture
Such a team culture runs deep and wide, according to Rachael Goulding, whose reflections are made from the American midwest.
“Vaughan Azzurri can never be replaced, but it’s a team I can look back on proudly and be thankful for. No matter where I go or what I do, I have those memories.”
“I hope that when I have kids they’ll get the chance to experience half of what I did with Vaughan. Sure, sports are about winning and physical growth, but it’s not nearly as important as the whole ‘package.’ This team has helped me be who I am today.”
The positive soccer culture nurtured by teams like the Vaughan Azzurri Girls 88 adds up to much more than winning three points. If the Azzurri’s unique idealism combined with their practical wherewithal needed to meet the goals of that idealism could touch down across the country, we might just be on our way to building a full-fledged Canadian soccer culture.
Andrew Coppolino is a Kitchener, ON based freelance writer and newspaper columnist with an interest in sports, food, and travel writing.
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