Hapoel Coaches
The Hapoel Soccer Club wants to give the opportunity for all the players within our league to learn how to play the sport of soccer both properly and effectively. For this reason, we have numerous professional coaches on the soccer fields throughout the day. The coaches lead the pre-game training sessions, referee the games, assist the team coaches, and are available throughout the day for players and parents to ask them questions. We ask that you please take advantage of this important club resource.
The individual teams within each Hapoel Soccer League are primarily coached by volunteer parents. This scenario is the standard for youth soccer teams throughout the United States. And, more importantly, historically, we have found that the players prefer to have coaches for their individual teams that know the players more personally. As a consequence, the players get the best of both worlds: coaches that they are more closely familiar with as well as professional coaches that are extremely knowledgeable, talented, and, possibly most importantly, passionate about the sport of soccer and teaching the sport to young men and women.
The Hapoel Coaches
Coach Graeme Jennings
Coach Graeme hails from Nottingham, England and is a Club Trainer
for Challenger Sports.
Coaching Background
Whilst working with Challenger Sports, Graeme has coached teams from clubs
in Salem, NH (Spring & Fall 07) and Stafford, VA (Fall 06) working with
children aged between 6-19. He also worked on summer camps coaching children
aged 3-16 in MD (06, 07) and GA (05). In England, he has been part of a
team that arranged and ran a Soccer tournament for 12 local schools, this
included a number of coaching sessions and a Soccer fun day leading up to
the event. More recently, he has been working for DNF Coaching who are associated
with the Arsenal Soccer Schools where he coaches in schools, clubs and also
runs soccer camps.
Coaching Qualification
Graeme currently coaches full time for Challenger Sports with the CCT program.
He began coaching with the CSLA award when he was 19; he then went on to
Sport Coaching modules which enabled him to learn the fundamentals of effective
coaching. Following this he achieved his FA Coaching Award which included
First Aid, Soccer Parent and Child Protection. He has enjoyed putting these
qualifications into practice coaching a range of ages and abilities in England
and America. He is now looking forward to further developing his coaching
skills in the future.
Playing Background
Graeme has been playing soccer since he was 6, representing his local team
from U8s all the way through to U18s. During this time, he has played for
his school, college and university. In addition, he represented the County
of Nottinghamshire for several years.
Coach Matt Bernstein (aka Coach Tigger)
(aka Coach Winnie-the-Pooh)
Coach Matt attended high school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey
where he was all-state in both soccer and lacrosse. Post-high school, Coach
Matt played soccer and lacrosse at Skidmore College where he was all-conference
and a two-time captain of both the men's soccer and lacrosse teams. Matt
has coached soccer and lacrosse for numerous high-schools and lacrosse clubs
for the past twenty years including The Dalton School (NYC), The Landon
School (MD), and the Camberwell Lacrosse Club (Melbourne, Australia). Coach
Matt has competed in and completed six NYC Marathons and numerous distance
triathlons including The Great Floridian Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile
bike, 26.2 mile run) Triathlon.