This month we are talking with Joe Montedoro who supports the Marine Corps as a Functional Consultant aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, with the Ground Combat Element Division (GCED), Capabilities Development Directorate (CDD), Combat Development & Integration (CD&I). After Joe retired from the Marine Corps in 2022, he and his family remained in Dumfries, Virginia, where Joe joined AMSG in October 2023. Joe is originally from Bradley Beach, New Jersey, and is married to his high school sweetheart, Jane. They have two children, Gianna (14) and Gavin (10).
In the fall of 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe’s son Gavin was signed up to play recreation soccer with Prince William Soccer Inc’s (PWSI) Courage House League. Prior to the start of the season, he received an email stating that the league needed additional coaches to build out the team roster for the fall season or else his son’s age group would not have enough teams to play. While Joe had never coached before, he played soccer in middle school and during intramurals in college, and even on a men’s indoor soccer team during a previous assignment to Quantico. Joe volunteered to coach his son’s U7/U8 team, thinking he would do it for one season — he’s now in his ninth season of coaching boy’s rec soccer. He has coached U7/U8, U8/U9, U9/U10, U10/11, and is currently coaching U11/12. This season his players selected The Raptors as their team’s name.
Throughout his time as a coach, Joe has focused on developing the boy’s fundamental skills —shooting, passing, receiving, ball handling, and learning the rules of the game. Additionally, teamwork and sportsmanship are also heavily emphasized. Each season, Joe has a combination of both returning players from his previous season and new players added to the team. Some of the new players have never played soccer before, so it’s a challenge to continue to build upon, and advance, the foundational skills that the boys who have previously played possess and develop and teach those same skills to the new players on the team, which is one of the things that Joe likes most about being a coach. He likes the challenge of teaching a player a new move or watching them practice a drill over and over, and then finally seeing it all come together, when the player finally ‘gets it’. Joe also enjoys spending extra time with his son Gavin and watching him develop his fundamentals, confidence, and sportsmanship that he can apply towards future challenges.
Joe’s team practices at one of the local Prince William County Parks, which does not have a set of soccer goals installed, so Joe brings his own soccer goals, that he purchased, to each practice and sets them up. When Joe heard about the AMSG Cares Hobby Program, his first thought was to utilize the Hobby Program to upgrade the soccer goals for the team. He received funding for the new goals prior to the spring 2024 season and purchased two new BOWNET soccer goals, which have made field set-up and breakdown much easier and provide the boys with regulation size nets to practice with. Joe is quite appreciative of the Hobby Program and the opportunity it gave to him for his team. While Joe originally thought he would only coach for one season, the opportunity to volunteer with PWSI as a soccer coach has been both challenging and rewarding, and something he would not think twice about doing again.
The Raptors play on Friday nights, under the lights, at the Ali Kreager Soccer Complex. If you are ever in the area and want to see The Raptors in action, stop by!
Interview by Sheila Rupp