According to Eric Sway, although his time as the Crestwood soccer coach lasted only three seasons, he is confident that he is leaving the program in better shape than what it was when he started. The third-year Red Devil boys’ and second-year girls’ soccer coach’s next coaching opportunity will keep him on State Route 422, having been announced as the new Kenston girls’ soccer coach on Feb. 11.
“I didn’t take it lightly leaving,” Sway told The Weekly Villager on Feb. 13. “It was not easy, I contemplated it and called coaching mentors, my wife and my son, who has gone through college and played Division I and all of that. I felt very at peace that I have accomplished way more than I ever expected at Crestwood with both the girls and the boys, I think they are in the right place, I will always be rooting for them.”
Sway’s final act at Crestwood will come with him participating in the search for a new girls’ and boys’ soccer coach.
Despite changing counties, Sway’s next coaching opportunity will send him back to his roots, coaching at a program he once considered a rival when he attended Solon High School when the two schools were not only neighborhood rivals, but also conference rivals, as they both belonged to the Chagrin Valley Conference.
As Sway begins his new coaching opportunity at Kenston, he now oversees the entire program alongside former Garfield G-Men boys’ soccer Coach Michael Coney, who has served as the Kenston boys’ soccer coach for the last two years.
While the Kenston soccer program’s numbers exceed that of several Portage County programs, Sway said that he hopes to bring the grit and toughness he instilled in his Red Devils’ teams.
“It is really cool that Coach Coney and myself, coming from Garfield and Crestwood—very similar programs—now that we end up at the same school and the same soccer program together. Instead of being rivals, we are actually going to be allies, we get to work with each other, we just share notes and have that connection of our Portage County roots,” Sway said.
Originally hired as the Crestwood boys’ soccer coach in 2022, Sway’s first year at the helm almost never began as the first mandatory August practice had only six players attend. Eventually the Red Devils assembled enough student-athletes to field a team, but Sway acknowledged that Crestwood was starting from square one.
“Some of these boys had not even kicked a soccer ball and they were going to be starting and playing 80-minute games and it was tough but in the end, you saw what the results were, we won a sectional championship,” he noted. “From that point, the word was out, and the program kept growing and the next year we had more boys show up and now we are up to almost 20 boys.”
After a successful first season in which the Red Devils captured an Ohio High School Athletic Association Division II sectional title, Sway’s responsibilities grew as he also became the girls’ soccer coach after Tate Taylor did not return after his first season with the program.
Sway said he was already familiar with the girls’ team as he had helped Taylor through his first year. The coaches had conducted practices by integrating the teams. After Taylor’s departure, Sway started pulling double-duty by running both programs, something he was not unaccustomed to as he had coached two teams simultaneously with his club soccer teams at Canton Akron United SC.
“I was involved in a lot of the games and helping to coach the games and helping with practices and continually thrust myself into the program,” he said. “The next season, Troy Spiker and I had spoken about certain things and whatnot, and I had a vision for the program to where I could do both.”
Over the last two seasons, Sway led the Crestwood boys to two more sectional titles and coached the 2024 squad to its first-ever district championship appearance, while the Red Devil girls clinched a Chagrin Valley Conference Valley Division title in the 2023 campaign.
Through three years, the Red Devil boys posted a 34-22-2 (7-6-2) record while the Crestwood girls went 22-12-1 (6-2-0). Although Sway’s time with the Red Devils has ended , he said that the formula for success has already been laid.
“I wanted to set the foundation definitely for both programs to be respected programs in Portage County and programs that people did not shy away from or did not think we were good enough to play them to where we had success that people would be calling us to play us and it is at that point,” he said.
