Dan Donigan hadn’t considered coaching before the UConn coach offered him a spot on staff. (Photo courtesy of Rutgers University.)
Charlie Inverso took over at Rider in 2011 after a 434-46-14 career at Mercer County Community College. (Photo courtesy of Rider University.)
It is the perfect coincidence that Dan Donigan and Charlie Inverso will be inducted together into the Soccer Coaches Association of New Jersey Hall of Fame on March 8.
The two Hamilton Township products have known each other since Inverso was a senior at Notre Dame High School, coaching a 7th-grade Donigan on the Our Lady of Sorrows CYO League team in the late 1970s. Four decades later, Donigan is head coach at Rutgers while Inverso runs the show at Rider.
Their professional paths crossed during the 2010 season when Inverso left Mercer County Community College and was hired as the Rutgers goalkeeping coach during Donigan’s first year with the Scarlet Knights. A year later, Inverso got the Rider job.
Both are honored and excited to go in with each other.
“Obviously getting in with Danny is great,” said Inverso, a Mercerville native. “He’s a guy I’ve known all my life. I owe a lot to Danny after he picked me up as an assistant coach. To be honest it would have been pretty rough for me if I didn’t have a place to coach. That was a great year for me. He was there for me and it was a good situation for me.”
Inverso added that his fellow inductee is a “genuine Trenton soccer guy.”
“I think as we get older the heritage of the Mercer County Trenton area soccer is really important to hold on to,” he said. “Just having another guy from this area going in is awesome. It’s going to be a fun day.”
Donigan, who set the single-season record for goals scored at Steinert before becoming the Big East Player of the Decade in the 1980s with the University of Connecticut, has similar feelings about going in with Inverso.
“He was one of my first coaches with OLS. To be able to be associated and to be inducted alongside of him obviously means the world to me,” Donigan said. “Being in a Hall of Fame is something that lasts forever and to go in there with Charlie is really special. It’s pretty cool.”
Inverso is someone Donigan always aspired to be like growing up. Because Inverso was a young coach, he was able to relate to his players, and Donigan said he felt comfortable playing under him.
“It’s something I always wanted to be to my players when I became a coach,” Donigan said. “I never said it to him, but I always looked up to him. He has a great personality, he’s funny and intense all at the same time. When you have those attributes in one package, you’re going to be successful.”
Both men have come a long way since those days of mentor-pupil.
Donigan coached for nine seasons at the University of St. Louis, leading the Billikens to seven NCAA appearances. He returned home to coach Rutgers in 2010 and got the Scarlet Knights to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament one year later. His career coaching mark is 152-90-32; he has been either a conference or regional Coach of the Year six times and has coached seven All-Americans and 13 Major League Soccer draft picks.
All this success came in a career he never even planned on. After graduating from UConn, Donigan bounced around in several indoor and outdoor professional leagues “making enough money to survive but not stabilize my future.”
His dad, Pat, worked at McGraw-Hill and Donigan figured on applying there for a warehouse job, or maybe trying to hook up with Nike. For the heck of it, he sent a resume to his college coach, Joe Morrone, who was still at UConn. Morrone had an assistant coach opening, and when he asked Donigan if he’d ever considered filling the spot, he thought about it and dove right in.
“I stepped right in cold, got that opportunity and it was a lot of fun,” Donigan said. “It was natural for me to take kids on the soccer field and train them. I progressed in tactics, in the Xs and Os of the game. I became infatuated with it. It was all kind of stumbled upon very innocently.”
Inverso has had a much longer coaching career, but he has only been a fulltime coach for the past five years.
He started as an assistant under future U.S. Men’s National Team coach Bob Bradley at Princeton University for five years before taking over at MCCC in 1986.
The Vikings were already a powerhouse. Inverso turned them into a dynasty.
In his 24 years at the helm, MCCC went 434-46-14 with five national championships and 18 trips to the national tournament. Over 160 players graduated and went on to play at four-year schools. Over 40 of his former players became college or high school coaches while 16 have played professionally.
He was also the goalkeeper coach for the U-15 U.S. National Team and is co-founder of Mooch Soccer, which provides soccer opportunities for the inner-city youth of Trenton.
During his entire tenure at Princeton and MCCC, Inverso also worked fulltime as a middle school health & physical education teacher in Hamilton. He left the teaching profession when he went to work with Donigan, and took over Rider in 2011. He turned around a moribund program, as the Broncs enjoyed their best season in over a decade last fall.
Unlike Donigan, Inverso has wanted to coach soccer from the start. But whereas Donigan had no qualms leaving for the Midwest to advance his career, Inverso was a homebody. For awhile, his desire to stay close to home stood in the way of a full-time coaching career.
“I wanted [a coaching career] from day one, but it just took a longer time,” he said. “I took a different path. I didn’t want to leave this area. I have no regrets about not leaving the area. The older I get the more I realize this area is a pretty great place to live. There’s pretty good people and a lot of characters around here.”
And while Donigan didn’t mind leaving, he was more than happy to come back. Both are proud to call themselves Jersey boys, which is why this honor is so important to them.
“I’ve always prided myself and always bragged about Jersey soccer,” Donigan said. “For me to get inducted into the New Jersey Soccer Coaches Hall of Fame, I don’t think in my right mind I could ask for more. Of course I want to win national titles, Big Ten titles, but this is an honor I’ll never forget. It’s so meaningful to me, more than anything else I can think of. There are so many great people, great coaches, great soccer people that are here that aren’t in this Hall of Fame, it’s very humbling.”
Inverso embraces the honor because of who it comes from—other coaches, specifically those at the high school level. He said the influx of academies has given high school soccer “a bit of a bum rap” over the years, but that shouldn’t be the case.
“I don’t think the academies were designed because we don’t have good high school coaches, they were designed to make it more competitive,” he said. “People are assuming the coaching is sub-standard and I couldn’t disagree more. It’s not like when I was in high school, a coach was involved three months a year. These guys are year-round guys. For me, it’s been a foundation for the rest of your life. I had a coach like [John Wagner], he taught me lessons I still use today.”
One of those coaches Inverso referred to is Mike Brennan of Bordentown Regional High School. Brennan is on the SCANJ Executive Committee and friends with both township inductees. For Brennan, it’s as much about the way the two just care about soccer as anything else they have accomplished. Their influence on local soccer is palpable, he said, and even though they coach at a high level, they always come back to work with youth players.
“Whether it’s Dan running around a field in Robbinsville with ten year olds on Wednesday nights or Charlie’s years of dedication to the Mooch program, it all points back to what kind of men they are,” Brennan said. “They get it. They realize that soccer is a great outlet for these kids, and that they deserve the best from their coaches. They are a great testament to how important this area has been for the development of soccer in this country.”
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