Longtime Hawthorne coach Gus Schell retires from coaching girls soccer

There was a time, Gus Schell says, when he could have named the seniors on every one of his girls soccer teams in the order in which they graduated.

But when you've been the head coach since 1984, sometimes your memory gets a little hazy.

Schell announced his retirement as the Hawthorne girls soccer head coach after 39 seasons, more than 500 victories and lots of great memories, both for himself and for the hundreds of girls he's coached over the years.

"I'm good at coaching and I'm still good at coaching soccer,'' said Schell, who will continue coaching the Bears' indoor and outdoor girls track and field programs. "But there's got to be a time to stop.

"It's a good time after all these years for another coach, another voice," he continued. "My daughter's getting older, and I want to spend more time with her and my wife during the summers before she heads off to college. The cupboard isn't bare and the next coach will have something to work with. It's just time."

Schell and Hawthorne High School have been synonymous for nearly half a century, since the time soon after his father died while he was in the third grade, leaving him to be raised by his mother (who is still alive at age 91) and grandmother.

Schell played three sports every year he was at Hawthorne High School, playing basketball and track all four years and playing some football in a town that revered the sport and still does.

He told The Record's Ron Fox in August 1989 that he enjoyed football but he played the sport in high school just to fit in.

"My family came over from Germany. I'm a first generation American" he said at the time. "My uncles and my father were among the founders of the Haledon Soccer Club and while other kids were playing baseball, I was having soccer balls thrown at me."

So in his sophomore year, in 1976, he mentioned his love of the sport to his history teacher, Paul Macio, who was also the Hawthorne athletic director at the time.

"He said if I got about 20 kids who wanted to play soccer, he'd see what he could do," Schell said.

Schell and a few friends got the signatures and Macio got permission to form a junior varsity soccer program for 1977. A year later, they went varsity.

"Sports was an escape for me," Schell said. "And I was fortunate to have men like Paul Macio, Ed O'Connor and Neal Hancock who coached me, taught me and helped me grow up. They got me to really like this coaching thing.''

He coached girls soccer at Hawthorne while teaching business education for several years at Hudson Catholic and then at Lakeland, where he got his final teaching certification. A job teaching at Hawthorne opened up in 1991, around the same time he became the Bears' head boys basketball coach.

By then, Schell was already entrenched as the girls soccer coach and what he calls his "pillars" of success were well established. Those pillars never changed during his coaching career.

"You have to take care of yourself in order to perform your best for the team," Schell said. "You have to care about your team and teammates by getting to practice and games on time prepared to help your team be its best. And you have to have respect for the game, your opposition and for the officials."

He never won a Passaic County or a sectional title, "I lost about five times on penalty kicks in the finals,"''" he admits ruefully. But despite his 500-plus wins, he never measured success by victories on the field.

"When I talk at awards ceremonies or dinners, I look at the kids and say, 'here are my banners,'" he said. "I've always wanted the kids who've played for me to go on and have good productive lives, who've become surgeons, good parents, lawyers, work with special-needs kids, those are my banners. If I can do that for a few kids, who say 'playing soccer was good for me, I loved it, it showed me what I can accomplish,' then I've done well."

And that memory?

Presented with a question of who the returning varsity players were on his first girls soccer team in 1984, Schell didn't hesitate much.

"Antoinette Saccone, Beth Psota, Laura Sebetich, Mary D'Angelo, Pam Hovey, one of the Loboscos (Dria) and Sue Starcev," he rattled off after a moment's thought.

Check the September 9, 1984 edition of The Record. He didn't miss one.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ girls soccer: Longtime Hawthorne coach Gus Schell retires