Casa Emigranti Italiani 

I have been fortunate to play Pebble Beach twice, the second time with my son ! Monterey Peninsula is just paradise on earth!

 Unique views of 17 Miles Dr., Monterey Peninsula, California.

 The famed 18t at Pebble Beach

 2008, with my son Paulie, on the 18th at Pebble with Carmel Bay on the back.

 Palm Spring, CA, 1997

PGA West, Palm Spring, CA.

Notes from the 1986 season.

1986, the three times ( consecutive!!) State Champions Glastonbury Rangers!

1986 Regionals: my son is first from right sitting.

My first State Championship as a coach, with my good friend Jim Bryan:              19 79 or 80!

The depth of my failures as a soccer player were more than offset by the enormous success I encountered in coaching soccer!

I have mentioned that I was not a good soccer player at all, neither in Sicily nor in the United States. I lacked skills and, as importantly, did not nurture the few skills I had by working hard. I did not practice well, was not in shape, and it showed. I regret that a great deal, not because I could have become a professional or even a much better player than I was, but simply because perseverance and hard work have been the most important traits in my life since I started my work career. I have never been afraid to fail, I have persevered and spoken up to reflect my underlying beliefs. I have always tried to do what would be best for the organization or team.

When we moved to Glastonbury in 1978, my son was six, too young to play organized soccer as the minimum age was eight, so I decided to volunteer as a coach for a team of twelve-year-olds. Looking back on it I can see that having been a goalie, albeit a poor one, helped me a great deal more than I realized in becoming a good coach. As a goalie I had the play in front of me, both the defensive point of view and the opposing team offensive view, so I assimilated both phases of the game. I approached the coaching position with the belief that it should be a fun activity. I did not like the supercharged approach of other coaches, the excessive pressure: I wanted to win as much as the next guy, but not to the point of pushing the kids too far. First of all, they were just kids; and second,  their chances of becoming professional soccer players were limited to nonexistent.

The local soccer organization provided an opportunity to play for boys and girls ages eight to fourteen. Participation was very high, especially in the fall, when more than 1,000 kids registered to play soccer (our town has approximately 25,000 habitants). I not only began to coach but also became a director of the soccer program, and over the nearly ten years I served on this board, I held just about all positions: coach, part-time referee, divisional coordinator, travel team coordinator, president. The board did an excellent job in laying the groundwork to make this program a huge success, a tradition that has carried on to this day.

The program had two components: a house league for all and a "travel" program for the more gifted. Teams in the house league program played teams of comparable ability from town in the same age bracket, while the travel teams went around the state and faced competition from similar teams from other towns. At the end of the regular season, the travel teams also participated in a state championship competition. This event was organized by the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association, with representation from teams from the entire state by age group, and consisted of a single-game elimination-type structure (you lose and you are out). Team matches were drawn at random then placed in one of two brackets, with the winner of each bracket facing each other in the finals. Eventually the travel team program became a full-time effort, as these teams only played against each other and did not participate in the house program.

I brought a lot of credibility with me, just because I had come from Italy and was expected to be pretty good at this—and I was, when compared to the many American fathers who volunteered to coach a team and may not have played the game at all. I was also able to achieve a good measure of success pretty quickly. The team I coached won the House League in its age group, and the following year the travel team I coached won the state championship for thirteen-year-olds (around 1980). The following spring this same team was sent to New York State to represent Connecticut at the regionals! By this time my son was of age, and naturally I started to coach him.

Shortly thereafter, must have been 1981, our program formed permanent travel teams and I became the coach for boys born in 1972, my son's age group. We were a pretty good team from the start but didn't have a major breakthrough until 1984, when we won a local tourney in our age bracket, and never looked back. Confidence, the belief that you can win, that you are the best, is such a major factor in sports! Our confidence-building moment came in the fall of 1984, when we traveled to Fairfield county to face a team that had beaten us regularly and we came away winners. This was huge! We never lost another state championship soccer game again, going unbeaten for a three-year span, winning three state championships in a row in our age bracket! We also won a couple of holiday tournaments.

The secret to our success? We had an extremely well balanced team, a team that was truly a team, with no superstars but no slouches. I had a low-key approach that did not place undue pressure on kids, with an emphasis on having fun at practice. We practiced penalty shots as the last activity at all practices, a situation the kids became very good at. I also had the great assistance of a good friend who helped me coach the boys. The last year of our adventure together was particularly rewarding: We outscored the competition 31 to 2, and one of those goals was not a goal! And we did it while facing some top teams from Ridgefield, Newtown, Monroe and Simsbury. Once again we were rewarded by going to the regionals, this time in Niagara Falls. And to cap it all my son scored from about 35 yards out in the finals what proved to be the winning goal!

Soccer took a lot of time, with practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, games on Saturdays and Sundays, and lots of travel to all sections of the state. But it was fun! I am proud of what we accomplished on the field and consider us extremely fortunate on several counts: We met many of our best friends and see each other to this day, more than twenty-five years after the last game; I am proud to say that the great majority of boys have done very well, married and with families, and are themselves coaching; and even as difficult as things were at times, I think it was a great experience for my son and me. I am especially proud that we did it while letting the kids be kids! I see a few of the boys around town still and it is always fun to reconnect.

Many of these kids went on to play soccer in high school, and a few even played in college, but not my son. Paulie developed serious knee problems that made him less mobile and made running difficult and painful. We decided not to pursue soccer at the high school level, I am sure a big disappointment for him, but a move that opened into a new activity that we both enjoy to this day: golf!

Before moving on to golf, I need to recount three of the most interesting stories from my years as a youth soccer coach. The first one happened during a game at a tournament when a referee kept inventing calls and I became extremely irritated, more so than normal. (I never argued with refs, ever, and did not allow my players to do so either.) It was a hot day and I was getting hotter; I told the ref in no uncertain terms what he could do with his whistle! A couple of weeks later I joined a bank colleague to call on a large company in the Waterbury area, where we would meet the CFO. Yes, it was the referee, and I am sure he recognized me as I did him. We had a cordial and fruitless discussion and left. In the car, I told my colleague about the background. Oh well, can't win them all!

At least with this incident I did not have to see that fellow ever again! But how about "firing" my two assistants, two fathers who were helping me coach and doing the best they could? They had no prior soccer experience but were two nice guys. They are still my good friends, we get together with our respective wives, and few occasions together go by that they don't remind me of that incident!

My favorite soccer story is this one. We were playing a parents-children game, as we usually did at the end of the season. This was a great opportunity for parents, most of whom had never played soccer, to experience the game firsthand and to appreciate the difficulty of the game. My son was playing left wing on the boys' team and my wife was playing right fullback with the parents. Paulie, whose speed was not legendary, went on a break-away and my wife tripped him! My poor wife, the ultimate poster child against competition, tripped her own son! I will never ever let her forget it!

Gradually, after 1986, I started to disengage from soccer and golf became, slowly but surely, my major participatory sporting event. My son and I had taken lessons together and would go to a nearby par three golf course where we could test our skills, or lack thereof. Paulie did much better than I, but the benefits for both of us have been immeasurable and will continue to accrue for many years to come. We play a lot together, or at least we did in the earlier years; now we try to play couple times a year. It is a great way for us to spend four or five hours together. 

Of course I played golf often for business purposes, an activity that I highly recommend to all who have the ability to spend time with clients. I was able to play some of the best courses in Connecticut and New England, and eventually to play some of the best courses in the world (Pebble Beach, CA). I have played in a number of foreign countries such as Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Cayman Islands, Bahamas, etc. A number of these courses I got to play jointly with my son, and that made it extra special!

I love golf for the social aspect of it, but am not a very good golfer. Quite honestly, I care to improve, but up to a point: we walk (well, now it's more riding than walking), chat with our friends, laugh, lunch and go home! I have played at the same place in Connecticut for many years and I like both the course and the people there. Actually, it's more like we have a foursome who play together every weekend, or at least we did for many years. People move away, and so have most of my golf friends, so I met new people. I still enjoy golfing every weekend, usually either Saturday or Sunday. When I was working it was my mental health day; now that I am mostly retired and play lots of golf, it is a way to kill a few hours and have a few laughs.

More recently I have become a member of a golf course in Florida, and that is a lot of fun, with my own golf cart in the garage that I can hop into, drive two minutes to the starter, and play golf! Plus I have the opportunity to make some more great friends. However, let me quickly deflate this balloon: I play more, but not any better! I want to keep playing at a level where I am not a complete embarrassment and can have fun with my friends. There is only one big drawback to the country club membership in Florida—just don't mention that you support President Obama! I think I have found maybe five or six families who will admit to supporting his policies, and one or two don't count (from a voting perspective) because they are foreigners from Canada! This, in a crowd of some eight hundred families, not that I have polled them all.

But back to golf! In 2001, I stopped in Rome on my way back from a business trip to Istanbul (at my expense of course, honesty first) and was able to get tee time on a golf course on the outskirts of Rome, Olgiata. I took a taxi, went to play, and ended up being a single. It was a very nice course and I really enjoyed it, more so after I figured out what I was doing wrong: Distance in Italy was in meters, not yards, which explained why I was coming up short to the green by ten to fifteen yards on my approach shots! Embarrassing, especially for a global executive!