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By JOHN C. COTEY, Times Staff WriterEven at 1-9-1, Holly Freeman has met little resistance as the only woman to coach boys soccer in Pinellas County.
TARPON SPRINGS - To coach his boys soccer team, Tarpon Springs athletic director Wayne McKnight was pretty sure he landed a gem.
He hired a former all-county player who went on to play college soccer. He handed his program to a proven winner, someone who guided one of the best programs in Florida to its first state championship, someone with international coaching experience.
The boys should be thrilled, he thought.
Once they got over the shock that their next coach was a woman, of course.
"When they told us, yeah, we were pretty surprised," said sophomore midfielder Demetri Hatzileris. "It was a completely new thing for us. I don't think any of us had ever had a girl coach before. We were surprised, but actually, we were kind of excited too."
Holly Freeman wasn't sure everyone would share Hatzileris' sense of adventure. She coached a boys team once while working for the Department of Defense in South Korea. She remembered the trepidation that first day of practice, wondering if she would be rejected outright merely because she was a woman.
When she took the field for the first time as Tarpon Springs' new coach during tryouts, those feelings resurfaced.
* * *
The tryouts probably were Freeman's most nerve-wracking. She knew there would be skepticism, maybe even a player or two who might try to push the new coach. Man or woman, that is the nature of teenagers.
Prove yourself. Show me you deserve it. Make me want to play for you.
"I didn't know what these kids were going to be like," Freeman said.
All she had to go on was the advice her husband gave her. "Don't worry," he had said. "You'll do great. Oh, and remember, don't take any crap."
Freeman was well-received by her players, especially after showing them she had a little game herself.
"We wondered if she could do the job," Hatzileris said. "In tryouts she was actually playing with us and keeping up with us. We thought she has some potential."
When Tarpon Springs initially pursued her, it was as a teacher first, coach second. The school needed a science teacher, and Freeman came highly recommended. The school also needed a boys soccer coach. McKnight's initial reaction was to convince girls coach John Freiermuth to return to the boys team he coached in 2001-02, then name Freeman the girls coach.
Freiermuth was more ecstatic than anyone that Tarpon Springs was pursuing Freeman, and he pushed hard for her. But he was not interested in leaving a girls team he coached to a state title last season. Also, his daughter plays on the team.
With Freeman in the fold as a teacher, McKnight met with principal Dennis Duda, activities director Keith Thornburgh and three Sponger boys soccer players about making her the boys coach.
The verdict was unanimous: What are you waiting for?
"Everyone has been extremely supportive of the move," McKnight said. "And her rapport with the student athletes is some of the best I've seen."
McKnight has been so impressed, he now wonders if he'll be able to keep her around. The program has lacked continuity in recent years, and Freeman could be a stabilizer. But he knows that the combination of her soccer acumen and ability in the classroom makes her an attractive candidate for any job, and she has shown she is eager to tackle new tasks.
Freeman says she is pleased with her decision to coach boys, rather than waiting for a girls job to open, though the team is 1-9-1. She said losing is painful, but with a little luck her team could have a much better record. She is heartened that her team is improving. Though the Spongers haven't made the playoffs since 1997, players like Hatzileris say if Freeman sticks around, the Spongers soon will be a district contender.
* * *
Freeman, 33, who played for Dunedin and Berry (Ga.) College, has been successful at every stop in her coaching career. She turned Dunedin into a contender in northern Pinellas County, no easy task. She parlayed that into a job at Palm Harbor University.
In 1998-99 she took the girls to the school's first state title. With much of the foundation she helped construct, the team repeated in 1999-2000.
But Freeman wasn't there for the second title. Just before school started in 1999, she took a year sabbatical under an exchange program to teach in Japan. She had applied for the program the year before but turned it down, and ironically, so had Henry LeFebre, an assistant coach at PHU.
Shortly thereafter, the two started dating. When they discovered they had both applied for the exchange program, been accepted and changed their minds, they changed them again and went to Japan together, where they married a few months later.
She had her first experience there coaching boys, though only as a volunteer part-time assistant, while teaching middle school.
Freeman was guaranteed her job when she returned - assistant Randy McGonegal ran the team in her stead - and for three years after she came back made sure the Hurricanes remained one of Tampa Bay's best programs, making the playoffs every year.
But her itch to travel and experience other cultures needed to be scratched again.
In 2003, Freeman and LeFebre had the opportunity to work for the Department of Defense in South Korea for a year on a military base teaching mostly Korean-American kids at Osan American High School.
She applied to coach the girls soccer team. When she got the call that they could use her, she was thrilled.
When they said she'd be coaching the boys team, she was stunned.
"I was like, "What?,"' she said. "But the guy (coaching) the girls team didn't want to give it up."
Freeman took the job, but not without serious thought. She was about to shake up the soccer scene in a male-dominated Asian society, in a male-dominated military culture.
"I had some reservations just because a lot of the kids I was working with are half-Korean and half-American and came from, umm, more traditional families where they weren't used to having a female coach," Freeman said. "When I first met the boys, I could tell they were sizing me up: "What's this chick going to do?"'
How about this: She took one of the worst teams in the district and turned it into a competitor.
Freeman said she didn't win any championships in South Korea, but her team did beat Seoul American High, which it had never done, and made it to the Pacific Tournament playoffs.
In the end, even one of her detractors, an outspoken Korean mother of one of the players, came around to appreciate Freeman and eventually became a regular dinner guest of hers and LeFebre's.
"Of course I love saying, yeah, my high school team won a state championship, but I rank that as one of my favorite seasons," Freeman said. "I felt like I was appreciated as a coach. What was really gratifying to me, unlike some other places I had coached, was they didn't really have the luxury of good coaches so they really, really appreciated someone who took time and had real drills and had done this before. I just clicked with that team immediately."
* * *
Unlike her previous foray overseas, there was no guarantee of a job once Freeman returned to the United States. Her former assistant, John Planamenta, was entrenched at PHU and there were no other girls coaching jobs open at the school.
She e-mailed her resume to most of the county's schools while she was still in South Korea, and had a handful of offers.
She chose Tarpon Springs, then McKnight chose her.
Not many of her colleagues were surprised she would tackle the challenge of coaching boys.
"Not at all," Planamenta said. "She is definitely someone who would jump at that and do her best. I don't think many women coaches would, but Holly would. She likes different challenges. It's in her nature."
Freeman is part of a growing breed of former girls soccer players staying in the game as coaches. Until the surge in the sports popularity among girls during the Mia Hamm era, there weren't as many female coaches, said Planamenta, who also coaches a club program in Countryside.
Now, he sees many of his former players coming back to coach.
He expects the number of female coaches to increase. In Pinellas County, there were only three when the school year started - Bridget O'Donnell at Dixie Hollins, Theresa Harmon at Gibbs and Darlene Lobo at Lakewood - and those numbers aren't much different other places.
Freeman is the only woman coaching a boys sport, other than cross country, swimming and track, where coaches often take on both the boys and girls teams.
She knows there are detractors, skeptics who wonder how this could possibly work, how the first-year coach can possibly relate to and inspire teenage boys. Some may look at the Spongers' record as proof that McKnight's decision was borne of desperation and was little more than a public relations ploy.
Her players don't agree.
"Not true, but I know some people will say that because that's just the way they are," senior defender Stratos Tsambarlis said. "Sometimes, there's something missing that has nothing to do with the coach."
Replacing the Spongers' graduated goalkeeper has been a primary obstacle. A few other key seniors graduated. And competing with strong programs at PHU, Countryside and Clearwater has been an uphill battle.
Factor in a new coach for the third time in four years, and stability becomes another issue.
Tsambarlis, who has played since his freshman year, has seen the Sponger coaching carousel and understands it takes time for a coach and players to mesh.
"You have to learn where to play people, who can do what, and that takes time," he said. "I think she's an excellent coach. She just needs some more players. Next year, she'll be a lot better."
The potential story lines of rampant sexism, of players plotting to oust a coach they don't respect or parents and the booster club holding the new female coach to a higher standard are not here.
Instead, it's a story of players and coach adjusting to each other. Freeman runs the same offense and defense she did at Palm Harbor, because she's convinced the game is still the game. She has found players willing to embrace a new method. Some have even said her drills are better than what previous coaches made them run.
Even off-color language, which will get you one lap around the field these days, is more muted.
"For the most part, the boys have gone along with that," Freeman said. "I think for the most part, they have been very respectful and haven't said anything that was offensive."
Maybe, Freeman continued, when the time comes for her players to enter the workforce, and their boss is female, they'll be able to look back on their soccer days and draw life lessons.
"Maybe ... they'll look back and say "Okay, I did this before, and you know what? It wasn't such a bad thing."'