By Steven Sellers, Sound Senior Sports Writer
Five decades of coaching, six CIAC state titles,
11 Shoreline
Conference championships, 220 soccer wins at Guilford High School, two
Hall of Fame inductions—none of it has changed Bill Wallach’s basic
philosophy. It’s just proof that his philosophy works.
“You have to develop players
physically, mentally, and emotionally; then you have success,” says
Wallach, who will be inducted into the Connecticut High School Coaches’
Hall of Fame in November. “I tell the kids that I want to win—I don’t
want a ‘0’ or a tie—and that it’s something we all have to work for on
and off the field. If we don’t have the same goals, we go nowhere.”
At its core, it’s an approach that
values candid communication. In Wallach’s eyes, that bedrock principle
is a thread that binds his success in coaching soccer, gymnastics,
track, and wrestling at Guilford, North Branford, and Sacred
Heart-Hamden from 1970 to 1999 for 378 overall career victories.
“I don’t think it’s changed,”
Wallach says of high school sports and athletes. “People sometimes say
the kids are softer, that the parents get involved too much but, as a
coach, my philosophy always has been that if you’re up front with the
players and the parents, you succeed.”
He still can be found close to the
sidelines, helping another generation of kids learn the self-discipline
and teamwork that comes with sports. As he paces the sideline,
imploring his soccer team to execute and then, just as quickly,
commending a player for a “well-played” ball; Wallach still does what
he does best. Whether assisting the North Branford boys’ soccer team
with Coach Cliff Yerkes, running a preseason conditioning camp for
Guilford girls’ soccer, or guiding a U13 team for the Soccer Club of
Guilford, Wallach brings to his team the passion that Yerkes remembers
when he played for Wallach.
“He’s one of the reasons I’m a
teacher and a coach,” says Yerkes, who teaches at North Branford High
School. “He’s an educator first; he wants to be called Mr. Wallach, not
Coach Wallach. He’s incredibly dedicated to what he does and a hard
worker, but he’s also inspiring. He’s passionate about what he does.”
Wallach is just as passionate in making the point that he’s never been a one-sport coach and neither should young athletes.
“I’m a firm believer in two- or
three-sport athletes,” he explains. “My best teams had players that
letter in two or three sports. I wanted them to play soccer, wrestle,
play basketball, hockey, baseball, or track. When you get an athlete on
the field, they don’t know how to lose. When you get a [one-sport]
player on the field and the team’s down by a goal with a minute to
play, they might say, ‘We’re going to lose.’ That never happens with an
athlete. I think I only had one or two full-time soccer players on my
teams.”
Wallach’s next honor—induction by
the Connecticut High School Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame—will join
his Connecticut Soccer Coaches’ Association Coach of the Year Award in
1978 and Connecticut Soccer Hall of Fame in 2002. But there’s one award
Wallach sees as missing.
“They gave the award to the wrong
person; it should have gone to my wife,” Wallach says in admiration for
his wife Carol, who held the fort while he held countless team
practices and traipsed off to hundreds of games. “The [spouses] are the
ones in the trenches while we coaches go out and have fun.”
The future? Where else but another practice, another game day, and another chance to work with kids?
“I’m semi-retired,” Wallach says
with the energy of a man half his age. “I teach a couple of hours each
week at Baldwin Middle School, working with intellectually and
physically challenged kids in the gymnasium.”
And whether it’s the soccer pitch or the classroom, Wallach finally gives up his true secret.
“These kids,” he says, “it keeps me young keeping up with them.”