CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 Blake New remembers his soccer epiphany vividly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up all around the south playing baseball, basketball, football,\u201d he told cleveland.com. \u201cI had no idea what soccer was until I moved to North Olmsted in the sixth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had been wearing deck shoes and had played at school. He came home and said he needed a new pair of shoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played this new game,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the beginning of New\u2019s soccer career.<\/p>\n
Now 57, New has been named as the inaugural coach of Lorain County\u2019s USL2 team, which is set to start play in May at ForeFront Field in Avon. Club Chairman Andrew McDonnell said New, the soccer coach at Oberlin College, was chosen among six candidates.<\/p>\n
Related: NE Ohio lands soccer team to start play in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as if he were born for the sport. Within a month of that moment of discovering soccer, he was on a travel team. In the 1980s, he said, North Olmsted was a hotbed for soccer, with a melting pot of ethnic fathers serving as coaches who knew the game.<\/p>\n He earned a scholarship to Cleveland State and then shared goaltending duties with Otto Orf on the Cleveland Crunch in 1992. He stayed for a master\u2019s degree at Cleveland State and then got the gig at Oberlin.<\/p>\n When McDonnell contacted him last year, the timing wasn\u2019t right. <\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m really flattered,\u2019\u201d he said. But he was involved in coaching club soccer for the Cleveland Force, which had a demanding schedule with three practices a day. The Force has its own club from U8 to U19, and they have a USL2 team on top of it, he said.<\/p>\n But after leaving that job, his schedule opened up, and he figured \u201cthis would be refreshing for me to have something to look forward to in the late spring-summer and keep my skills sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n McDonnell said New checked off three boxes in requirements of what he was looking for.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst and foremost, 25 years in the same organization speaks volumes,\u201d McDonnell said. \u201cYou generally don\u2019t see that loyalty anymore. Second is his ties to the community. We are a Lorain County community-based team, and he lives in Lorain County so that\u2019s just a great fit. Most importantly, he\u2019s coaching at the collegiate level right now and he\u2019s also played at the pro level. As our players are transitioning from college to pro to get to that next level, he\u2019s got a foot in his career in both of those sections.\u201d<\/p>\n That skillset will allow him \u201cto prepare the players accordingly,\u201d said McDonnell, who added New will retain his Oberlin coaching job.<\/p>\n New, who was in Phoenix on a recruiting trip, said he was excited to take on the USL2 challenge. He has been coaching at Oberlin for 30 years. He guided the women for three years and the men for 27. He is the longest-tenured coach at Oberlin. <\/p>\n That experience, McDonnell said, makes him \u201cthe perfect fit for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen this team was just on paper I reached out to Blake and said, \u2018Hey, would you ever consider this?\u2019 It wasn\u2019t the right time in his life. \u2026 Now the time is right. I couldn\u2019t be more grateful the timing worked out. We\u2019ve been circling each other for a year on this so there definitely was a lot of history getting him on board.\u201d<\/p>\n Lorain County USL2 will play its first-ever match in May 2026, with the first home game tentatively scheduled for Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 Blake New remembers his soccer epiphany vividly. \u201cI grew up all around the south playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-297356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}