new coach pg 4 9-15-23
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New coach
stressing
development
Kurt Lunzmann has been coaching soccer around the world for roughly 20 years. He has spent time in the academies of Chelsea FC in the UK among other professional clubs, and has a UEFA A license, which is the highest youth coaching qualification in the world.
His job has been to develop players to get a professional contract.
“It was quite ruthless because a lot of players, by the time they get to 18, they get released and they don’t sign a professional contract,” he said. “You have to be very hard and very direct because it’s their livelihood. Everyone is competing.”
Now Lunzmann, a native of South Africa, is coaching the Elite team at Putnam Science Academy. It is his first full year with the program, which is fielding a second team for the first time in four years, and his background will serve him well.
“The main job of the second team is to back the first team up, and the job of the coaching staff is to develop the players to get onto the first team,” he said. “Winning is fun, don’t get me wrong, but it is still about development. My mentality is – at times – a bit hard on these players because while they’re not competing to get a professional contract, there is still competition if they want to go to a good college and play at a good level. It’s not only on the field but in the classroom as well.
“So I push them to try to get the maximum out of them to be able to fulfill their potential. I really try to link sport with education, which is something I really like about America. A lot of players where I come from in Africa, that’s not the case. When they’re done as professionals, they have nothing to fall back on.”
Lunzmann, along with assistant coach Frank Taylor, has stressed from the first training session a culture of individual and team success that centers around six personality traits: honesty, respect, trust, fairness, mentality, and intelligence.
“They had to buy into those things at the very first training,” Lunzmann said. “If they felt those things weren’t part of their personality, then by all means they were allowed to go play wherever else they wanted to. If you don’t have that inside your personality, success is going to be limited. But they have all bought into that, which is great…the rest we can coach you.
“The culture, the discipline are both very good. We feel that’s more important than the technical skills and tactical skills. If they don’t have those things to perform as a team, then the rest of the stuff is irrelevant.”
Lunzmann is leaning on a leadership group that includes second-year players Bereket Hadgu, Hugo Torres, and Leo Uren, plus newcomers Jerry Da and Raul Escolano.
“I think everyone on the team understands what we want the culture of this team to be,” Uren said. “Of course, there are times when our minds aren’t in the right way, but when that happens, we remind each other of what it means to be part of this team and how we have to approach it.”
In addition to the trio of returnees in that group, Punit Elavarsu and Pranav Shetty are back for a second year at PSA. The team’s newcomers include: Da, Escolano, Rafa Altarriba, Hugo Cuevas, Luis Egea, Caleb Gasana, Angel Miguel, Assa Mora, Anton Lemos, Mario Navas, Carlos Paniagua, Luis Pedrosa, Leandro Romagnoli, Jaime Saenz, Aiden Basabose, and Joao Sousa.
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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