Joe Cummings spoke with Boston Pro Soccer Examiner as he prepared to depart the Boston Breakers as President and General Manager at the end of their inaugural WPS season to start a new position as CEO and Executive Director of the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA).
A 33-year resident of Upton, MA, Cummings's soccer career began 30 years ago when he founded the Northboro Youth Soccer Association and coached JV and varsity soccer at Algonquin Regional High School. Among other positions, he was coach at Holy Cross, Director of Operations for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Birmingham, Alabama, President and General Manager of WUSA Boston Breakers from 2000-2003, CEO at New England Soccer School, and at various times Technical Director, DIrector of Operations, and Assistant General Manager of the New England Revolution.
LE: What was the greatest success you took from the Boston Breakers in their inaugural WPS season?
Cummings: That we once again had the best league in the world and that the Breakers had reestablished themselves in the minds of the sports fans in New England.
LE: What was the low?
Cummings: If your team doesn’t make the playoffs, that’s got to be one of the lows.
LE: English nationals Kelly Smith and Alex Scott missed some games and were not available for the playoffs or the All-Stars. Did schedule conflicts with international fixtures hinder the team's success?
Cummings: No, not at all, we knew they were not going to be available for the semifinals in the playoffs, we knew that at the start of the season. We were so confident in our players that if we had made the playoffs, we could have done something in the playoffs without them.
LE: Might the internationals have been more motivated if they were going to play in playoffs?
Cummings: I don’t think those two women know how to play any other way except with 100% dedication. But, the games when we lost both Kelly and Alex surely had an effect on our performance.
LE: The Breakers had a hard time putting the ball in the net at the end of the season, and Tony DiCicco said he'd look for international strikers off-season. What kind of player does this team need in terms of striker?
Cummings: We just need Kelly Smith to be able to play more games next year.
LE: Who does the scheduling?
Cummings: The league scheduling is done by a combination of people. We know when the FIFA windows are, when those games can be played because they're set well in advance, but that doesn’t mean we have any say over them or that we can manipulate around them or not play that week because you only have a certain number of weekends when you can play.
LE: Why did the season begin so early this spring [March 29] and end so early in this summer [August 9]?
Cummings: The decisions are determined by so many factors that are out of our control. Take Harvard, for instance, in our present contract with Harvard, we’re not able to play after the end of August, once football begins. And that may be true for a number of teams in our league that play at college facilities or it may be true for team that even play at other complexes. September can get pretty busy at a lot of stadiums and we wouldn’t have had any playoffs here because we wouldn’t have a home venue.
LE: Has there been any talk of building a soccer stadium that both the Breakers and Revolution could use?
Cummings: There’s always conversation and it’s been going on for a number of years and God, we would be excited by it. I was at the Revs for a lot of years, have a lot friends at the Revolution and I would love that and for it to be in the city. It would be fantastic to go to a game in Somerville or anywhere and be able to see a double header with the men and the women, both New England-based teams. Am I part of those conversations? No, those happen at a level above general managers, those happen at the owner levels.
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LE: Tony DiCicco spoke out about referees a couple times during the season, a lightning rod issue throughout MLS, and he was fined twice. What's your take on that?
Cummings: Tony has a great coaching voice, but he also has a voice that carries across the United States. He has such visibility and people know that when he speaks, he’s speaking from the heart. He’s very, very passionate about the development of women’s soccer and he wants to see it develop across any spectrum. When he saw things that he thought or felt he needed to comment about, he did.
Were there times that he wished that he had probably said less? There certainly were. [laughter]
LE: How helpful was the media in the Breakers' visibility?
Cummings: You’re always going to have to fight a little bit for your piece of the media pie in and around Boston. The advantage we have is that when you're the only women’s professional sports team you stand alone and you’re the ‘first in your category’ in marketing phrases. This city has such success and such a following for the other sports – Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, Red Sox, and Revolution, so we were very cognizant of that yet very appreciative of the coverage we received, but it’s going to take a while. I think the attention to our team will come more and more each year.
LE: WPS Commissioner Tonya Antonucci recently spoke about the possibility of promotion and relegation in WPS, is that a possibility?
Cummings: It’s so far down the road. It piques interest because it exists and we all follow with great interest the promotion-relegation battles of the last games in the EPL every year, but for women’s soccer, I think it’s something down the road.
LE: Tell me about your new position as CEO and Executive Director of NSCAA and why you chose to change jobs.
Cummings: It’s an organization of 28,000 coaches. We have a convention in January that is the largest collection of coaches and soccer aficionados in one location, we present over 10,000 individual coach-of-the-year awards regionally and nationally, and we are the leading provider and most recognized provider of coach education in the United States. So I’m going to be overseeing the largest association of coaches and continuing to develop our coach education philosophy and methodology.
I've been a member [of the NSCAA] for nearly 30 years. I was president of the association in 2004, I was on their board of directors for close to 15 years, and since I cut my teeth administratively with them as an executive in this sport, it’s a perfect way to finish off my professional career. And I wouldn’t be leaving unless I was supremely confident that WPS and the Boston Breakers were well-established in the minds of soccer fans and I’m confident we’re on the way to being around for a lot of years.
It was a pretty easy decision. I was at the point where the NSCAA came calling and I was going to listen.
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