The history of girls’ soccer in Mercer County boasts some truly outstanding players and coaches. One of the original superstars hails from Hamilton Township, has served the game well in both capacities and is still giving back to soccer in her hometown to this day.
For that reason, Elyse Diamond is the keynote female honoree at this year’s Trenton Select Committee dinner.
The TSC has been honoring career accomplishments of Mercer County athletic figures since 1972, and a male and female winner are feted each November along with several other special contributors and scholarship winners. The list is a “Who’s Who” of area athletic greatness, something not lost on Diamond when she got a phone call from her former Nottingham teaching colleague (and TSC committee person) Elaine Pittaro.
“I was really taken back when Elaine called to let me know about it,” Diamond said. “I did some research and I was like ‘Wow, this is huge.’ It’s a huge honor, and I’m really grateful.”
It’s not like Diamond hasn’t received huge honors before. She was the first woman ever inducted to the Mercer County Soccer Hall of Fame, which came in that organization’s 12th year in 1997. She is also in the Hamilton West and MCCC HOFs as a player and the Steinert HOF as assistant coach for the 1988 team that was inducted.
“I guess I was too young to really appreciate what they fully meant,” Diamond said. “But as I’m older now it really is quite a prestigious honor. I never thought about getting something like this. Honestly, I just do what I do, because that’s what I do. That’s my passion.”
It has to be a passion to do it for as long as Diamond has done it. From her days as Elyse Eichman, when she set scoring records that still stand at Hamilton High West and Mercer County Community College, to her present position as Nottingham health and physical education teacher/varsity girls’ soccer coach, Diamond has been about the game of soccer.
“Obviously she had a great playing career, she’s a long-time coach,” TSC President Rick Freeman said. “She’s impacted a lot of kids through the years. That’s what you’re supposed to do as a coach — serve as a role model and positive role model. I think she has done that.”
Diamond prides herself on relationships she has had with her players. In fact, her oldest daughter Kelly was named after Kelly Britton and Kelly Tweedly, two captains on the first team she coached at Nottingham.
Now that’s loyalty. And it’s a two-way street between coach and players, said Diamond, adding that she and her players have a good rapport on and off the field. She enjoys going to practice, and she loves her players’ visits to her office before school starts.
“I love going to Nottingham High School,” she said. “I love my teaching job. It’s not a job to me. Our students at Nottingham are good kids. I say I could do this forever. I know it sounds corny, but I mean that with my heart.”
And it was with that heart and soul that Diamond made a huge impact on the Mercer County pitch at a young age.
She played basketball and softball before exploring soccer and was hooked immediately.
“I found it to be my favorite sport,” Diamond said. “I enjoyed all the sports, but I liked soccer the most.”
Diamond was one of the pioneer players in the Hamilton girls’ recreation soccer league, as she played for Romano’s Pizza at the same school she now teaches at.
“I used to play at Nottingham (Junior High at the time) on Sundays, and then I spent the majority of my adult life there,” she said.
Diamond went on to play travel soccer for the Hamilton Golz, where she was one of two 13-year-olds on a team full of 15-year-olds.
There was a point in Diamond’s rec career when she realized she might have a pretty good future in soccer. They were playing a team that had the league’s top player in Karla McCoy, whose brother Kenan was a sophomore starter on Steinert’s undefeated 1973 state championship team.
“Everybody feared her, she was awesome,” Diamond recalled. “Everybody else backed down to her. I stood up to her, I actually got the ball off her and that generated a fire in me that I could do this.”
And man, did that fire burn bright.
In the late 1970s, which were pre-Nottingham High days, Hamilton and Steinert had split sessions, with freshmen going to school in the afternoon while the rest of the population went in the morning. That made 9th-graders ineligible to play varsity sports, which makes one wonder how great Diamond’s numbers would have been with one more year.
“You don’t know,” she said. “How can you even know that answer? “
What is known, is that as a Hornets forward Diamond scored 112 goals in three seasons. She exploded for a record 47 as a junior, and both marks still stand.
“I loved that feeling of scoring a goal,” Diamond said. “It was almost like a drug. It made me feel so good, I wanted to go out and get another one.”
She did just that at Mercer, where she became the all-time women’s scorer with 118 goals in two seasons. The record still stands. Diamond was an All-American in both high school and junior college, and she earned a scholarship to play at Rutgers.
Despite scoring 15 goals as a junior, which set the Scarlet Knights single-season record until U.S. National Team member Carli Lloyd broke it within the last decade, Diamond was disillusioned by her experience with the Scarlet Knights.
“I played for Charlie Duccilli, and he and I just did not click,” Diamond said. “He made me feel I was the only one on scholarship so I had to be the best in everything and come in first with everything. He just played head games with me.”
Diamond didn’t return to Rutgers for her senior season, and it was one of the only times in her life she lost her zest for soccer. She went to Trenton State (now The College of New Jersey), which at that point only had club soccer, so she sat the season out.
After graduation, Elyse got a teaching position at Reynolds in 1987. She become Steinert’s varsity assistant girls’ coach under the legendary Bob Pivovarnick a year later.
“It was great working with him,” Diamond said. “He was very serious, and I think I’m a serious coach most of the time as well. He just drilled the fundamentals. We both had a simple philosophy.”
Steinert promptly won the NJSIAA Group III state championship that season—the last in program history to date.
In 1989, Diamond got a teaching position at Nottingham and was named the new girls’ soccer coach, and she has been there ever since. Her best team was the 1999 Central Jersey Group III finalist team that went 18-3-1 and won the Colonial Valley Conference Colonial Division title.
Now in her 26th season, Diamond has more than 200 wins with the Northstars and also spent five years coaching her daughters in travel soccer in Bordentown. She actually coached Bordentown’s career scoring leader Alexis McTamney, who is now starring at Monmouth University.
The only time she ever missed time at Nottingham is when she went on maternity leave, and her ex-husband John Diamond guided the team during that period.
One of Diamond’s great joys was coaching her daughters Kelly and Kaitlyn, the latter now playing at Mercer.
“When they were babies, I would bring them to the games,” she said. “When they got old enough, they were my ball girls. A lot of my soccer players baby sat them. Once they got old enough, they wanted to come to Nottingham and play. It was a lot of fun.”
Fun. That’s the key word. Nottingham has fallen on tough times in recent years and was 3-13 as of this writing. But Diamond’s philosophy of coaching is like those fishing bumper stickers — a bad day of coaching is better than a good day with no coaching at all.
It is why she is still there despite the recent losing seasons. After this long on the sidelines, most coaches might quit if they weren’t winning.
“My assistant, Scott Innocenzi, has been with me for the last 15 years, and we talk about it many a day after a game,” Diamond said. “But it’s not about the wins and losses anymore. It’s about the relationships with my players, and I love the game.”
And that is what impressed the Trenton Select Committee as much as anything.
“Anybody can hang in when you’re winning,” Freeman said. “It’s when you’re having the tough times, and you’re still there for your kids. That serves those kids well. She’s not gonna bail just because of a little adversity.
“She knows what it’s like to be really good and reach a pinnacle. But she’s not looking for the exit door now, she’s looking to stay and make it better.”
Diamond says she is taking it year by year as to when she will retire and says she will continue to do it for as long as it’s fun.
That may be for quite a while.
The TSC dinner will be held on Nov. 9 at Mercer Oaks in West Windsor. To reserve tickets, call (609) 588-0152 or (609) 771-4169 by Nov. 5.
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