THE INFORMER PAGE 2

DECEMBER 17, 1991

Award Winning Coach Taking on New Challenge

Joe lacobellis poses with two of his winning team members at the
Canadian Nationals in Granby, Quebec last month. Joe was awarded
"Coach of the Year" for 1991.

The man who has led Capilano College’s men’s
soccer team to the nationals and won more times than
not over the past 14 years of coaching soccer at Capilano
College is giving up his job. But don’t panic. “It’s for a
year or two,” Joe promises, while he focuses his winning
attention on the challenges of his new job administering
the Sportsplex. After 19 years of weekend soccer (train-
ing, playing, competing, travelling) he admits that he is
looking forward to calling two days of the week his own.

In a timely move from the Cana-
dian College Athletic Association Joe
was named coach of the year for 1991.
Now he will pass on the opportunities
and challenges of handling the win-
ning Blues team to one of his assis-
tant coaches, Jim Easton, a former
star of the 86ers and a world cup
player. “We're getting a very compe-
tent person,” Joe says.

Up until now, Joe’s life has revolved around soccer.
He says it was the game of his youth, and he spent
many days playing from dawn to dusk in Clinton Park
across the lane from his house in East Vancouver. His
coaching career began “by accident” back in 1974 when
he accepted a job coaching women’s volleyball at VCC as
part of his MA requirements for UBC. The team came in
second in the province that year. “With me, that’s
challenge enough to say I’m going back next year to win
it.” Joe did return to lead his team to a win, but it was
the men’s, not the women’s. They won the provincials
and the year after he took them to the Western Cana-
dian Championships. (There was not nation-wide
competition at that time.)

A more than competent player himself, Joe played

"Winning is not the
bottom line. It is very
important, but if! win ina
season, and half of my
team has a rotten time with
me, they’re not going to
come back."

on the first provincial select team for under 21
two years in a row and was encouraged to try
out for semi-professional teams. But he chose to
concentrate on school. “I didn’t feel professional
soccer was going to provide the standard of
living I was looking for. It was tentative which
way pro soccer was going to go in the early
70s.” Noting the demise of the Whitecaps, Joe
adds, “I think I made the right choice.”

After three years with VCC, Joe came to
Cap to coach men’s and women’s volleyball,
start the men’s soccer program, and serve as
the College’s fitness supervisor. By his second
year at Cap, the men’s soccer team was win-
ning. This, explains Joe, was because he had
good contacts in Burnaby and North Shore high
schools. The team won again in 1979, but as the decade
broke, Joe realized he’d have to make another step to
stay competitive.

“By 1980-81, the calibre of soccer in the college
system was getting better and better. In order to be
competitive, we had to look for the elite student ath-
letes.” Joe started going after the students the pros
wanted: those with experience in the select teams and
national teams, as well as some who had already been
recruited for professional teams. Since 1985, says Joe,
the Blues have included at least one or two national
team players every year and several provincial team
players. “In 1980-81 we had win-
ning teams and from ’80 to ’85 we
went to the nationals five times.”
Success, he says, is based on a lot of
hard work. “It doesn’t just happen.
It’s a lot more involved than people
think. Kids just don’t show up to
college and play.”

Recruitment is a long involved
process. Joe goes to high school
games, talks to coaches, the players and their parents,
then runs identification and training camps through the
spring and summer to make the final selection. “It takes
tons and tons and tons of time. We have to sell the
college and the program to the kids, then we have to
work hard at following through.”

Joe’s success in doing so has helped to build a
program over the past ten years that now attracts top
players in the Lower Mainland to Capilano College. He
has done so by stressing a team approach and not
forgetting that fun is one of the key components of the
game.

“The most important thing to a student athlete is
that the program is well organized, that the coaching is

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