Wisconsin Soccer Central

The last time Matt Heilman wasn't a high school soccer coach, he was just 18 years old and just a few months out of high school.

Now, he's a veteran English teacher finishing up graduate school and looking to get an administrative license with three little kids.

Heilman resigned as the Verona girls coach following the 2011 season, his 12th at the helm. He also had two stints with the school's boys program, serving as head coach from 2000 to '02 and an assistant in 2008 and '09. Before that, he held several roles with the boys program at Middleton, his alma mater.

"I didn't know how it was quite going to feel," Heilman said when asked about being a former high school soccer coach. "I'm actually surprisingly comfortable with it at this point. We'll see what happens the season rolls around, the school year comes and see all the kids again. That could certainly change. But at this point, I'm pretty much at peace with it."

Like many prep coaches who step down, Heilman's decision revolved around time and priorities.

"I'd say there were a number of things that all contributed, but the biggest of which is I'm not able to give the time that I demand of myself to put into the job," he said. "There's just too much going on for me now. I've got three kids. They're all getting involved in activities, my oldest is 8 and he's playing club soccer and basketball and baseball. This spring, I missed a bunch of his events. 

"Over the years, I've put in a lot of time, energy and passion into scouting opponents, watching other games, watching game film – a lot of things that go above and beyond just showing up at practice every day. Those are things that I've come to expect of myself in terms of being a good coach, giving the girls the best experience possible, and I'm just not able to do all that anymore. ... So I just think it's a comfortable time to step away and put more into the family life now."

Heilman compiled a 183-64-25 record at Verona, guiding the program to six conference titles (one Badger, five Southern Badger) along with the crown jewel for any program: The WIAA Division 1 state championship in 2010.

Verona took second in the Big Eight Conference with an 8-1-0 record this season and finished 15-4-2 overall – all four losses came by 1-0 scorelines, to Big Eight champion Madison Memorial twice (once in the playoffs), Milwaukee DSHA and Hartland Arrowhead in the season opener.

"My ultimate hope taking over the program was to try to strengthen," he said. "One of the ways I tried to do that was to really strengthen the schedule and try to instill a certain belief in our players that they could compete at an elite level."

"When I took over the program, I think there were good players there, but they didn't necessarily believe that they could always compete at the highest levels. The schedule when I took over was very easy – there were tournaments on the schedule where we would beat teams 7-0, 8-0, we'd win a championship game at a tournament 4-0. We weren't playing the highest level of competition we could.

"Over the last several years, I think we've had one of the more difficult schedules in the entire state and I think that's helped us a lot. Because we'd get in games and even if we'd lose 1-0 to a DSHA like we did this year, our girls know we can compete. They know we can beat teams like that. I really tried to lay that foundation, that we really can be one of the elite teams."

Longtime Middleton coach Ken Burghy inspired Heilman on several levels, going way back to the beginning. Heilman recalled a 1-on-1 meeting with his former coach during his senior year of high school.

"He told me I was the type of player he thought would make a good coach," Heilman said. "He said someday maybe there would be an opening and you could come coach for me. That summer, I called him out of the blue: 'Got any openings to coach?' He said, 'As a matter of fact, I do. Do you want to coach our freshman boys?' "

From there, Heilman went on to coach the Cardinals' JV team and was Burghy's assistant from 1996 to '99 before he went to Verona, where he found a teaching job and both head soccer positions open at the same time.

"I learned an awful lot from him," Heilman said of Burghy, who is heading into his 28th season as the Middleton boys coach – he also was the Cardinals girls coach for 23 years in two stints. "He was certainly my first and biggest mentor in terms of coaching."

"A lot of the things you see in our soccer handbook that we hand out to players and parents are very similar or identical to what he publishes over at Middleton. A lot of the basics of how to run a good soccer program, I've taken a lot of those things from him."

But while Burghy has a tried-and-true system of play refined over the years, Heilman always liked to mix and match. His state championship team played in a 4-3-3, and the last few years he's had the Wildcats play a flat four with zonal defending in the back rather than man-marking.

"I'm always interested in experimenting with different types of formations and systems of play, different tactical ways to approach the game," said Heilman, who had at least one player earn all-state honors from the Wisconsin Soccer Coaches Association each of his 12 seasons.

Will he resume those experiments sometime in the future, perhaps when his children are older? It's hard to say.

"I can't say that I'm totally done, I love coaching too much," Heilman said. "One of the things that has been difficult for me heading down the administrative route is that ... I want to be a principal, but I can't be a coach and do that. So I've been torn with that decision.

"I love game day, I love interacting with the students in that way outside of the classroom, I love helping them succeed and achieve and enjoy their high school days outside the class room. It's something I've always loved and that's going to be a hard decision to say that I'm done with it for good."