"Love of the game" on display @ Dec. 9 Annual General Meeting
Every December, the DC Stoddert Soccer community comes together at the Annual General Meeting to celebrate a handful of individuals whose extraordinary efforts made the year--and soccer--a magical experience for out kids and the club.
The 2009 crew honored at the Dec. 9 Annual General Meeting and Awards Ceremony represents the "best of the best" in a very strong field of coaches, referees and volunteers who make Stoddert Soccer the vibrant, thriving youth sports organization that it is today. Every weekend, more than 5,000 youngsters ranging in age from four to 18 don their colorful team jerseys and fan out across the city to play "the beautiful game." Every match, at Carter Barron or Hearst or Palisades, is a triumph of logistics involving countless E-mails and many volunteer hands. Teams must be rostered and managed, games scheduled (or rescheduled), weather checked, fields lined, goals set up and put away, referees assigned, orange slices distributed, and disaster averted.
This year was particularly challenging. Record rains washed out games and nearly threatened to cut the season short, stranding travel teams poised to move up a division. Field space remained scarce. Then, in June, Stoddert Soccer lost longtime coach and volunteer Kelly Murray and her daughter, Sloane, when a tree fell onto their car during a storm and killed them.
To honor their memories, Stoddert Soccer launched a new award, the Kelly and Sloane 
Murray Girls’ Coach of the Year. The award was introduced by a family friend, who said Stoddert Soccer "was and still is a varey imporatn part of the family’s life."
Other award-winners voiced similar thoughts. John Menditto, the Len Oliver Coach of the Year, has been coaching some players on his U9 Cats for half their lives and holds weekly family pickup games at the Palisades. He recalled "something magical" happening one dark autumn evening when running around an Air Force Base in England learning to play soccer from two volunteer coaches who knew nothing about the game. "Kids, you’re being given a great gift by all your volunteer coaches," Menditto told the young players who gathered in the Jelleff multipurpose room to celebrate their coaches. "You have an obligation to give that gift to some other kids." He told them that in soccer, "you will not be judged for your wins and losses, or whether you can do a throw-in" but on what they learn and pass on. "Our success as volunteer coaches is wether you take the time to volunteers your time," Menditto concluded.Choosing a star among Stoddert Soccer’s 28 outstanding travel coaches is no easy task, but 
our 2009 Travel Coach of the Year, Khaled Hamami, shone for his work giving girls new to travel soccer their first taste of the game’s competitive side. "He’s a terriffic role model," said Travel Director Kate Samsot, praising Hamami for his good character, loyalty, hard work and ability to make problems vanish. "He puts a lot of pride in his performance," she said. Hamami, a former player on Yemen’s national youth team, called nearly a decade of coaching younger age groups for Stoddert Soccer "a really great experience" and to be counted among the club’s great coaches. "The game’s all about the kids," he said.
Khaled Hamami, Travel Coach of 2009, receiving Stoddert Soccer jacket. 
What would soccer be without referees? Actually, many U13 girls’ teams would not been able to play if our FIFA Coach of the Year Arden Baker, a high school senior, hadn’t manned Hearst field dawn to dusk--officiating two games in the morning, taking a lunch break, and often returning for the afternoon games. Her co-winner, Bradley Blount, "consistently worked all year, spring season and fall," reffing as many games as he could, including running the sidelines as an assistant referee. Referee assignor Walt Anderson, who praised their initiative and emotional maturity, gave each winner a watch and plaque and advised both to savor the accolades. Soon enough, he joked, they’d earn praise for being the "second best referee" a team ever had--everyone else on the field being No.1.
"This club would be unthinkable without volunteers," Stoddert Soccer Administrator Tom Gross stated when introducing the John A. Koskinen Volunteer of the Year, Sarah Ducich. From rostering divisions to lining fields at dawn to diving into bins to find a lost uniform, no paid laborer could ever fulfill the many duties that volunteers undertake to make soccer a great experience for our kids. This year’s award winner stands out even among a stellar crew of dedicated adults. As Mike McNamee, himself a volunteer of the year, put it, Ducich is "one of the most dedicated people in a dedicated group." Volunteer of the Year Sarah Ducich with husband Don Blanchon and daughters Ella, left, and Josephine.
Ducich and her husband, Don Blanchon, VYSA 2009 All Girls Rec. Coach of the Year and Stoddert Soccer’s 2008 Rec. Coach of the Year, met playing soccer. They started coaching when their eldest of two girls started kindergarten and formed the co-ed Space Aliens team. Soon, the daughter and a friend were the only girls on the team, and she persuaded mom and dad to form an all-girls team so she’d continue playing. Then little sister started playing soccer. Soon, Ducich was volunteering for scheduling (exchanging 5,000 E-mails with the commissioner) and other duties. Today, with both daughters still playing, she has moved from tying young players’ shoelaces to coaching four teams while serving as co-commissioner of the girls’ high school division. Oh yeah, she also has a full-time professional career.
Before the start of every season, Ducich revealed, she and her husband think of quitting... of packing in their cleats, cones and balls and sleeping in on Saturdays instead of wondering why they are out lining a field on a blustery morning. But then memories of the players who caught fire, who suprised their coaches with a perfect give-and-go or gained confidence. Mostly, what has brought her back season after season is seeing the game she enjoys touch the lives of kids she loves. "I love soccer," Ducich said. "Getting them to feel the passion, that is my reward."
Thanks and congratulations to all our 2009 winners!
DC Stoddert Soccer 2009 Annual Awards
(NEW!) Kelly and Sloane Murray Girls’ Coach of the Year Award: Dino Merotto
reported and posted by Mary Lord 12/10/09. Photos from the Annual General Meeting by Woody Landay for DC Stoddert Soccer.
Kelly Murray and her children. Read The Washington Post account of Kelly’s life.
Family photo published in the Washington Post online July 4, 2009
The inaugural winner, Dino Merotto, (photo, right, receiving award from Director of Coaching Len Oliver) said he was "particularly proud" to win a trophy honoring two people known well by his players and parents. "Soccer is a team sport," said Merotto, coach of the U8 Raptors and U8 Pythons and former semi-pro player from England, noting both teams have co-coaches. "The whole club makes it such a privilege to coach here."
