RallyNorth.net

Ipswich coach: Newburyport recruits players

Tuesday, October, 16 By Dan Guttenplan
Sports editor

The talent factory that is the Newburyport girls soccer team is being dealt its biggest shots off the field these days. Following last Tuesday's 9-3 victory over Ipswich, the Clippers drew the ire of opposing coach Manny Lopes, who deemed the Clippers' recent spell of Cape Ann League domination as tainted. The Clippers have posted a 49-5-6 record since 2005 and advanced to the EMass. Division 3 Final last fall.

"Newburyport is loaded with quality players...however, they use questionable practices in obtaining players," Lopes wrote in an e-mail to the Ipswich Chronicle. "Eighty percent on the Newburyport roster does not reside in Newburyport. The girls soccer team uses school choice to its extreme by 'recruiting' players from their coach's club team, SC Vikings, to play at Newburyport.

"Despite it not being completely illegal in the eyes of the (Mass. Interscholastic Athletic Association) and Newburyport school officials, it is ethically wrong to recruit just like it is wrong and a violation of MIAA rules for a high school coach to train players from his/her club team in the offseason."

Clippers coach Robb Gonnam coaches two SC Viking club soccer teams, the Under-17 and Under-16 teams. By Mass. Interscholastic Association rules, he is allowed to coach any club team that does not include more than 50 percent of players from his high school team.

Gonnam also coached youth soccer in Newburyport for many years before the MIAA changed its rules in 2005 to restrict high school coaches from coaching eighth-graders. He returned to the youth soccer ranks last spring when the MIAA changed the rule to allow high school coaches to coach youth teams as long as the roster does not include more than 50 percent eighth-graders.

"That accusation that I recruit kids is completely unfounded," Gonnam said last night. "These kids were in the Newburyport school system before I coached them. There's no basis for it. I've never recruited anyone, and I coach plenty of kids that go to other Cape Ann League schools. Nobody is worried that I'm helping those programs."

There are two Newburyport High players on each of Gonnam's two SC Vikings teams. By comparison, there are seven North Andover players on the two teams combined.

"I've coached half of the Cape Ann League," Gonnam said. "When they asked me to stop coaching eighth-graders, I stopped. I didn't coach youth soccer for two years. I'm not looking to break any rules. There has never been an effort to get girls to move, and all of the local girls have a choice of which high school they want to attend."

Historically, Newburyport has the premier girls soccer program among local teams. Since 2005, Newburyport's winning percentage of .817 far eclipses that of Amesbury (.173), Triton (.245), Pentucket (.440) and Georgetown (.385).

Returning All-Cape Ann League standout Jillian Kinter, a Salisbury resident, attends Newburyport through the school-choice program. Starting at age 4, she played youth-league soccer and basketball, including a soccer stint under Gonnam's tutelage. Her sister, Brittany, played four years of soccer at Triton Regional. Jillian's mother, Patti, said soccer was not the major reason her younger daughter chose to attend Newburyport.

"A lot of her friends were going to Newburyport," Patti Kinter said. "It wasn't just soccer. Robb certainly didn't recruit her. He had no say. He didn't even know she was going to Newburyport until after she made her decision." Kinter is not one of the four Clippers currently playing on Gonnam's club team.

"To say I coach a club team and coerce girls to play at Newburyport, that pure fantasy," Gonnam said. "I'm not doing anything another coach can't do."