Falcon Coaches Earn National Coaching Award
With success comes recognition and such is the case for the Folsom Lake College women's soccer coaching staff.
A few weeks after leading and directing their team to a CCCAA State Championship, the staff was recognized with the National and Regional Coaching Staff of the Year award. The staff is led by Folsom Lake head coach Donny Ribaudo and assistant coaches Pat Powers, Teo Delgado, James Pierce and Robert Gray.
"Pat and I have been working together since 2014 so during that time we've worked on a curriculum of how we want to teach the game and we've spent many a year refining that," Ribaudo said. "There was this idea of what we called fail forward, where we learned from our experiences and our mistakes and utilized all of those experiences to help us coach and teach each moment of this tournament. We've tried to capitalize on all the information that we've learned from our failures."
Ribaudo and Powers have had help, as Ribaudo said he gives a lot of responsibility to his staff. Delgado has worked with the goalkeepers the last two seasons and sometimes will have other special assignments in training.
Pierce is on staff for his first year and his responsibilities revolved around recruiting. Gray has been with the team for six seasons as strength and conditioning coach. Ribaudo said he's done a good job of creating an inclusive strength and conditioning program that works well with student athletes.
"Pat can do a lot of things, but his specialty is teaching players how to polish their finishing skills, so final third moments," Ribaudo said. "He focuses a lot on functional training where he will create a progress on a skill and then the girls get lots of reps and coaching points and they're able to refine their skills in front of the goal.
"He's also an experienced tactician and an innovative coach. It's the beauty of what we have created. He and I work collaboratively to teach tactics and strategize on player management, build confidence on student athletes so they're able to support several aspects of coaching."
As much as Ribaudo and his staff want to win, there's a whole lot more that they do then win soccer games.
"We're not solely focused on winning, we're also focused on teaching and mentoring," Ribaudo said. "The winning piece has been the byproduct of what our vision is for the program. We put our energy into developing student-athletes and preparing them for their next experience.
"In this run to the state championship, the semifinal match was an epic match and we played really well. The girls did everything we've been teaching them and it was beautiful to see our system of play played so well on the biggest stage. We showed what we've been working on all season."