Coach Pete came across "the pond" to impart his special brand of humor-laced soccer to a new constituency here in the colonies. A semi-pro back home, Coach Pete continues to play, bad ankles and all, on several teams every weekend. He is the coach of the Santa Monica United U11G Cyclones and trains many of the Region 69 Pacific Palisades All-Star teams. He is a mad favorite of our junior set who race around the field happily kicking goals while trying to decipher what "fahster" means (we think it's British for "faster"). Coach Pete's Premier Soccer Coaching, in affiliation with Coast Sports, provides intensive instruction and holiday clinics for the most motivated of our players.

When Coach Cooper grows up he wants to be Peyton Manning. Hailing from the great state of Indiana, a Hoosier through and through, Cooper graduated from Ball State University with a joint degree in astrophysics and massage therapy. But his true love was football. Too small to make the varsity, he figured the best way to be noticed in Scheumann Stadium was as the strutting, crowd-rousing mascot Charlie Cardinal. Unfortunately in his first outing in the red bird suit he tripped and tore a rotator cuff ending his fist-pumping days almost before they began. His second love, teaching kids, quickly moved up the ladder. A stand-out in football, basketball, baseball and golf, Coach Cooper brings innovation and creativity to his classes. He also does a dead-on Christopher Walken impression, no easy feat.

The mainstay of our camp soccer program, Coach Christian has had to leave us at the end of each summer to return home to England. Well, he's back and he's ours for the foreseeable future. A former semi-pro player for Weymouth Town, a UEFA-credentialed coach and a certified physical education instructor, Christian has prodigious skills and the rare ability to impart them. All who have stepped onto the soccer field with him have come away better players with a greater appreciation of the game. Beneath his easy-going and gregarious exterior, Christian harbors a guilty pleasure. He is a big fan of Kabadi, the national game of Bangladesh, a cross between Red Rover and tackle football. A deeper secret is his true reason for coming to America: peanut butter and jelly. He just can't get it at home. Whatever. We're just happy he's here..

Coach Tracey is the artiste among us. A brilliant photographer, Tracey has enjoyed wildly successful exhibitions of her work back home in Bath and Shaftesbury. One of Summer of Fun’s most popular counselors, Tracey is as comfortable roaming the arts and crafts table as she is conversing about the rules and nuances of Rounders, a game she played at the highest levels in the English grammar school system. Additionally blessed with a beautiful singing voice (you should hear her hit the ‘high C’ in God Save the Queen), Coach Tracey can do it all. And we’re thrilled she’s doing it with us.

Coach Akeim and Coach Steve have known each other for over ten years. When Steve’s son Evan was first exploring sports, Akeim was running the programs at the Barrington Recreation Center. They shared a dream, one that endures to this day…that of opening a facility that would house fields and courts where classes and clinics and parties would run all day long. (Anybody got a spare Westside warehouse lying around?) Akeim’s baby, LA-Sports Kidz, (LA-SportsKidz.com) presents classes all over the city. And yet he still has time to team up with Coach Steve in putting on the best summer camp west of the Los Angeles…er…Mississippi River. As Coach Akeim likes to say, “it’s all good.” We agree.

Coach Steve took an unlikely and circuitous path to his present career destination. Determined from an early age to break into the movie business, he ran the Yale Film Society during his tenure at that small and obscure Ivy League school. Coming out of college he found himself traveling the world producing television commercials then spent a decade as a terminally aspiring screenwriter before stumbling into the world of youth sports. With an energetic four year old wanting to play soccer, Steve fell back on his distant high school experience and with a bag of balls (and a few How-To books), he brought Evan and a dozen of his friends out to the wilds of Barrington where together they dipped a toe into what has become an endless sea of soccer. For the past seven years, Steve has been the Coach Administrator for AYSO Region 69, Pacific Palisades-Brentwood, where he trains the coaches (now that he has a clue about what he’s doing) and helps to oversee the greatest program in youth recreational sports, while coaching Evan, Dori and Griffie’s regular season and All-Star teams. What ten years ago began as an excuse for father-son bonding has turned into a year round enterprise that includes weekly classes, summer camps, holiday clinics and private lessons. And while this might not be the precise realization of Steve’s silver screen dreams, it does fulfill his aspirations of reaching a widespread and appreciative audience every day.

10 Facts You May Not Know About Coach Steve

1. When he was born, his parents didn’t actually name him Coach.
2. Growing up, soccer was his second favorite sport. Watching TV was #1.
3. He has three kids. Evan, Dori and Griffie. And a wife. Mrs. Coach Steve…er…Marcy.
4. In his high school soccer career, he scored 1 goal. And it was an accident.
5. He went to summer camp in upstate New York for 10 years. He got too old to go so he created his own camp…which no one can kick him out of.
6. He was a history major at Yale. How else could he think up all those wacky camp morning rants?
7. His childhood heroes were Daffy Duck, Stymie, the Flash and Beaver Cleaver. If he’d been around then, Bart Simpson would have made the list.
8. In basketball, he can’t go left.
9. He had a dog named Jolson who was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
10. He gets his hair cut at Yellow Balloon. Obvious, right?
11. Chocolate is his green kryptonite.
12. He doesn't make the teams for AYSO.
13. He loves what he does and considers himself the luckiest guy in the world.
14. He’s not so good at math….