By Tom Haley
Staff Writer
Dave Carr has vivid memories of a game in 1970 when he was playing for Springfield High School. It was his senior year and the game was against Proctor.
“They beat us 6-5 or 5-4 on a penalty kick. We played really well and they were great. We were playing against one of the best teams in New England,” Carr said.
Proctor was one of the best teams in New England that year, maybe one of the two best. The Phantoms defeated CVU 2-0 in a game that matched Vermont’s large-school champion against the small-school champion for the right to go to the first New England Tournament in Bristol, Rhode Island.
Once there, the small-school champion Phantoms lost 1-0 to Chicopee of Massachusetts on a late goal. Chicopee then breezed to a 5-2 win the next day to claim the New England crown.
Carr has gone on to have an enormous impact on soccer.
He designed a course that remains the only sports specific Masters program in coaching in the United States.
Vlatko Andonovski, the head coach of the United States Women’s National Team, completed the course.
“He is probably our most high profile graduate.” Carr said.
“We have lots of Division I men’s and women’s college coaches and a lot of high school and club coaches.”
There are 170 alumni of the Masters program and 65 students currently enrolled in it.
Carr saw a real need for such a program.
“I realized early on that there were a lot of coaches who did not know a lot about coaching. They might have played soccer but they didn’t know how to teach the game,” Carr said.
Carrr has a vast soccer background and the beginnings of it are in Vermont. He started a junior high program in Alburg and coached at Burlington High School. He also helped start the Vermont Youth Soccer Association.
He later wound up being the head coach of the New Mexico Chiles, an entry in the American Professional Soccer League.
It was in 1999 when Carr decided to pursue his doctorate, taking him to Virginia Tech.
There, he was allowed to design the postgraduate course and it was later while he was working at Ohio University that Carr created a Masters coaching course that is specific to soccer.
He had an outstanding mentor to put down the foundation for his passion for the game. His coach at Springfield High School was Bucky Knisley who had played on the 1963 national championship soccer team at Castleton State. Knisley went on to coach at Colchester High.
Today, the course is taught online and that has allowed Carr and his wife to live in a balmier climate. They make their home in Bluffton, South Carolina, a community that made its way onto Forbes‘ list of the top 25 places to retire.
But retirement is not in the cards for Carr just yet. He is still a college administrator and working with his soccer coaching curriculum.
Ron McEachen, the former University of Vermont and Middlebury College soccer coach, is one of the teachers of the course from his home in Bristol.
McEachen last coached at Skidmore in 2012, completing 33 years as a college head coach in which he reached the rare 300-victory milestone.
McEachen is just another of the many soccer connections that Dave Carr still has to Vermont.
tom.haley @rutlandherald.com
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.