For the last 16 years, Paul Krzminski has nurtured the Streetsboro Rockets boys’ soccer program almost as if he was a raising a child. He is now letting go of the reins, having announced his resignation in a Facebook post on Nov. 5.
“16 years is a long time to do anything and just the amount of people and the kids that I have worked with and seeing them grow up and they have families of their own now, it’s fantastic,” Krzeminski told The Weekly Villager. “Soccer was just a way for me to get to work with the youth. It gave me an excuse to teach life’s lessons and just to give back. I had a fantastic soccer coach in high school. He was very influential to me so I figured I could try and do the same for a couple of kids anyway and it turned out to be a lot more than a couple of kids.”
According to Krzeminski, he considered the idea of resigning from the program during the season as his oldest son, Payton was putting the final touches on his senior year. After Payton’s graduation, he was set to continue his soccer career at Capital University and Krzeminski said he did not want to miss any of his son’s college soccer matches.
He acknowledged that what kept him from committing to hanging up his whistle was the pending arrival of a new freshman class that was layered with talent that he had nurtured himself having coached those kids since they joined the Streetsboro United Juniors soccer club when they were much younger.
Ultimately, Krzeminski’s familial duties won out and he is biding adieu to a program that he helped provide stability to from the first moment he took the job.
“I will be Dad,” he said. “I have not been just Dad again in 16 years. My youngest will play soccer at Streetsboro so I will be taking him to and from practices and picking him up so I will just be Dad.”
Krzeminski became familiar with the Rockets’ soccer program when he returned from his tour of duty in the army and started coaching the Streetsboro United Soccer Club. He began coaching at the U-8 level but soon assumed the job as Streetsboro’s newest boys’ soccer coach in 2009.
Up until that point, the Rockets had struggled to keep keeping a coach longer than a few years. According to Krzeminski, it was almost like a revolving door each season for coaches in a program that was only in its 14th year since becoming a varsity program.
It was a big adjustment for Krzeminski, who had only coached young children and had little experience coaching teenagers. He said that although he was new, still being in his late-20s helped him relate to his players instantly.
“I was still able to identify and able to relate to these teenagers,” he said. “I was not that far removed from the scene. I knew the thoughts that they were having and where they were at in their lives and the struggles that they might be having with growing up so I was able to adapt I felt like, so it was not difficult for me.”
Connecting with the players was the easy part but it was the on-the-pitch product that needed the most work as the Streetsboro boys went winless in his first three years. Krzeminski said that it was humbling to be a part of a program that lacked rich tradition like the ones he had been a part of when he played while attending the now-defunct St. Peter Chanel High School in Bedford and during his collegiate days at Tiffin University.
While the wins eventually came, it was the culture of the program that made the most significant strides.
“You could just talk to any one of the boys that has played for me in the past,” Krzeminski said. “It has always been a family-oriented program. We have always loved each other. It was more important to me than anything else. It was just respecting each other, the game,the parents, your peers, your opponents and the officials.”
Streetsboro may not have had a lot of winning seasons in Krzeminski’s tenure, but the pride of the program grew tremendously. Krzeminski’s coaching days may be over now but he will never say never about a potential coaching come back in the next several years.
