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09/22/2016 12:00 AMWhen Brett Gagliardi left the soccer field after breaking his ankle during the 2007 Shoreline Conference Tournament, he knew that wasn’t the way his Thunderbirds’ career was going to end. Brett was exactly right because, a few years after graduating from North Branford High School, he became an assistant for the boys’ soccer squad when his brother Luke was the head coach. Now, Brett gets his chance to lead the T-Birds as he recently began his first season as their head coach.
“I was beyond excited because it was something I always wanted to do. I always wanted to come back and coach this program. I remember the dominance of this program in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, watching those teams win 18 or more games per year. I looked up to those guys who played on the high school team back then. There was nothing more that I wanted than to get to the high school and wear the purple and white. Now that I can continue that being a coach, words cannot describe how excited I am,” Brett says. “After I broke my ankle my senior year, I always had a feeling in the back of my head that was not how it would end at North Branford. I refused to believe that was the end to my book. I always thought I’d be the coach of this program one day and that that would be my final chapter. The fact that it has come true, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
Brett began his coaching career with North Branford Youth Soccer in 2010. He coached a U-12 team that, coincidentally, featured many of the athletes who are juniors and seniors on this year’s North Branford boys’ soccer squad.
“Brett is not a stranger to the North Branford High School soccer program. He was an assistant boys’ soccer coach for a few years when his brother Luke was the [head coach]. He was also an assistant boys’ basketball coach for a season,” says North Branford Athletic Director Kory Kevorkian. “Both Brett and his three brothers all played soccer at North Branford and being the head coach of the program is something he has aspired to do for a long time. He is committed to building a program and is very excited and motivated about restoring some pride into the team.”
Having patrolled the midfield while captaining the T-Birds during his playing days, Brett says that coaching always came naturally to him. For the last two years, Brett was the JV head coach and a varsity assistant at Maloney High School in Meriden.
“I played central midfield and that’s the link between the defense and forwards. It’s like the central hub who knows where everybody is supposed to be and needs to communicate well with both ends. Having played that position growing up, it felt natural that I’d be able to instruct players at different positions because I knew what I wanted to see from my players in the back or where I wanted my outside midfielders to run or where I wanted my forwards to make runs to,” says Brett. “By my senior year in high school, I felt like a coach on the field. Plus, being a captain, I felt I was helping coach while on the field.”
Brett’s tenure at Maloney taught him about what it takes to coach at the high school level. He’d only been an assistant coach in his first stint with the T-Birds and so Brett learned a lot from serving as head coach of Maloney’s JV team.
“My brother, when I was his assistant, took care of a lot of the responsibilities. I wasn’t a JV head coach. I was just a varsity assistant. I didn’t have the responsibilities of working with both programs, but at Maloney, I was the head JV coach, as well as an assistant to varsity,” says Brett. “More importantly, I had those responsibilities I didn’t have my first go-around. I had to call for buses, cut players from the team, work with parents, work with the school administrators, and really develop a feeder system for the Maloney varsity squad.”
Brett knows that the North Branford boys’ soccer program has struggled in recent years. He understands it will take some time to turn things around, but Brett is up for the challenge, and he’s already seeing improvement.
“Through three games, we’re 0-2-1, and I understand it’s going to take a while to build this program to what it was. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the improvement my current squad made from summer to now is remarkable,” says Brett. “Opposing coaches are telling me this isn’t the same North Branford team as last year. They’re telling me that whatever I’m doing, continue it, because it’s making a difference. It shows that the work I’m putting in is making a difference and it feels good to hear that.”