This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in The Other Paper on Dec. 26
Brad Cole grew up on Spear Street in South Burlington, right across the street from the University of Vermont’s sport complex, where he now helps coach a championship soccer team.
As the program’s associate head coach, Cole was on the sideline last week when the Catamounts won their first national championship in Cary, N.C., with an overtime goal by Maximilian Kissel that shocked the nation.
Cole said the victory was years in the making. He joined the team as associate head coach two years ago after coaching at Cornell University and the University of Portland. Before that, he played soccer at UVM and held a few early-career coaching positions with the team.
Cole is originally from South Hero, but his family moved to South Burlington when he was in sixth grade. He attended Mater Christi Elementary School, Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and South Burlington High School, all the while playing soccer with the Far Post Soccer Club. He transitioned to a coaching career at UVM after graduating.
The Other Paper caught up with Cole after the team’s major victory last week.
Q: How did you celebrate the big win?
BC: We had a huge gathering of friends, family and alumni supporters down in Cary, so we spent the night with everyone at the hotel after. We completely took over the lobby bar and meeting space — I mean it was ours.
Q: Can you take us to the sideline of Monday’s game?
BC: I think we had around 3,000 fans travel to the game for us, and there were probably eight to 10,000 people in the stadium. The energy was amazing. Our fans were directly behind our bench, so it felt like we were celebrating with them.
Q: And there was a lot to celebrate toward the end of the game with two late goals — Marcel Papp in the 81st minute and Maximilian Kissel in overtime to win.
BC: Marcel’s goal was huge, and the game-winner was crazy. We all saw it coming after the ball was played in from behind. You almost had time to see it coming, if that makes sense? It was like a three-, four-second run, which felt like a long time from the sidelines.
Q: It was a very suspenseful goal, hence the nickname “Cardiac Cats.” What was the reaction from the bench after the ball hit the net?
BC: The team went ballistic, and I collapsed where I was standing and didn’t move at all. That moment felt like the culmination of a lot of work, you know, from myself and the other coaches and the players and all our support groups. There was just a lot of emotion and stress leaving the body all at once.
Q: What was it like to have so many fans there for that moment?
BC: It was unbelievable. Vermont is a super tight-knit community and that really showed. I played at UVM, so it was unique to have a lot of my old teammates there, and a lot of people I looked up to.
Q: You were recruited to play at UVM after playing for the Far Post Soccer Club throughout high school and you committed to the Catamounts as a junior. It seems like you came into college with a lot of momentum, but you’ve been open about your struggles as a student and the mental health issues you dealt with off the field. Can you tell us more about that experience?
BC: After my first year and a half at school, I started having these off-field issues — depression — and I stopped playing soccer for two years.
I realized I made mistakes that I wanted to make right, so I set up a meeting with the coach. I mostly wanted to apologize for not giving a full explanation for why I stopped playing. I was in the coach’s office explaining how I’d gone down a wrong path and, much to my surprise, he asked if I wanted to come back to the team. I didn’t think that was even possible from an eligibility standpoint, but they helped me figure it out, and I got back on the team with one season left to play. They made me a captain. Then I got into coaching and the rest is history.
Q: Did playing soccer again help with those off-field issues, or did you address them before coming back to the sport?
BC: Soccer was always a huge part of my life and that didn’t change. When I decided to step away it was not because of soccer. It was because I didn’t want to be in school anymore. I had a therapist, which was helpful, and I worked to put all the pieces of my life back together. I didn’t necessarily envision being back on the team, but I knew I needed to finish school and try to overcome some of the obstacles that I wasn’t able to overcome previously. I felt that was part of becoming a better person.
Q: As a kid who grew up on Spear Street, and a player and early-career coach at UVM, what was it like to come back to the school and help guide the program?
BC: It has been a big goal of mine to be here and realize the success we’re having. This community means a lot to me, and I wanted to give back to it. It’s a place that doesn’t have as many resources as other places, but we believe in ourselves and our ability to compete.
That’s easy to say after you’ve won a national championship, but we’ve always held that belief. We’ve recruited the players by telling them the vision was to win. At the beginning of the season, our objective was to win the regular season, the conference tournament, and the national title. It’s special to help raise the bar here and redefine what we think is doable.
Q: You were in uncharted waters as things heated up in the post season. Was the team nervous for the championship game?
BC: We didn’t play very well in the semifinal, but at the same time, you need to keep competing, keep running, keep doing your job. It got to a point where we were learning on the job a bit, but that’s the point of raising the bar, right? We just tried to bring our own identity to the field and not let any stage get too big.
Q: How would you describe that Catamount identity?
BC: We’re pretty strange. We’re weird. Our guys are super competitors, but they love each other. They love being around one another. We take the games and training very seriously, but we have fun, too. A lot of people started to travel with us in the postseason —I think our travel party at the last game was 65 people — so they all got a good look at the team. Most people said there was a good energy and brotherhood in the group and that our guys are just comfortable in their own skin.
Q: With 20 goals scored after the 76th minute this season and 16 after the 83rd, maybe you should be referred to as the “Cardio Cats.” What can you say about the conditioning your guys go through to have that type of stamina so late in the game, when other teams are running out of juice?
BC: That’s a good question. We train hard, especially at the beginning of the season, and it tapers off a bit as the season progresses and the games ramp up. We have GPS trackers and other technology to monitor our training load, but I would say we’re pretty old school. The physical load we put on the players in the preseason is high, so it’s a very fit team.
We have a lot of depth, too. If you look at some of these late goals, a lot of times it’s a guy coming off the bench who’s fresh. Our starters will wear down a team and then we bring on more talented players who have every right to start, and they push the game forward.
We talk a lot as a team about never giving up, never lying down, never dying. I like to give the guys a quote before every game and one of my favorites is, ‘Bring them into deep water and let them drown.’ There’s another one about being a Sherpa. The gist is we want to be the team that can climb a mountain and breathe while other teams are suffocating. We talk about doing anything it takes to win. If you’re feeling tired or pain in your legs, well so is the other guy. That motivates us.
Q: What does this victory say about UVM’s program and soccer in Vermont?
BC: The big thing is that we are Vermont’s team, and we want everyone in Vermont to be proud of this victory. This isn’t just our team. I’d like to see the sport of soccer grow in Vermont and I think that’s happening. I also hope there’s a kid out there growing up in Vermont who loves soccer and sees this championship run as inspiration to be part of the team one day.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Hometown coach reflects on Cardiac Cats’ title win.