Mercer Soccer Hall of Famer Lisa Gmitter-Pittaro will coach the U12 Match Fit Mercer team this fall.
By Rob Anthes
Lisa Gmitter-Pittaro finally had found time to take a vacation in mid-August, but once she got there, she couldn’t wait to get home and back to work.
After all, there was a lot to do, and the ever-energetic Gmitter-Pittaro has found success comes to those who don’t stop moving. She hasn’t stopped since she burst onto the scene as a star athlete at Steinert High in the late 1970s, earning All-America girls’ soccer honors three times. Gmitter-Pittaro went on to a national championship at George Mason University in 1985—claiming collegiate Player of the Year honors the same season—and a five-year stint as a member of the U.S. Women’s National Team.
She counts among her friends Jill Ellis, fresh off coaching the USWNT to a World Cup. But when Ellis saw Gmitter-Pittaro at a wedding in August, it wasn’t the World Cup on her mind. Apparently she and the rest of the 1985 William and Mary women’s soccer team still are nursing the wounds from a Gmitter-Pittaro-led GMU comeback win in the NCAA Tournament, and they let Gmitter-Pittaro know it.
“The whole Tribe team was there,” Gmitter-Pittaro said. “The whole night I was thinking they wanted a rematch.”
And, of course, Gmitter-Pittaro would have been game. She’s still out there, playing with her teams, whether it was with the Hamilton Wildcats competitive soccer program she led to great success, the Steinert High girls’ soccer squad or her new venture with Match Fit Academy. Gmitter-Pittaro will coach the U12 Match Fit Mercer girls’ team based out of Mercer County Community College this fall. In the spring, she will coach the U16 team in Raritan. The U16 team features Gmitter-Pittaro’s daughter, Gianna—a rising star in her own right.
Gmitter-Pittaro still works full-time as a gym teacher in the Hamilton Township School District—she’s at Wilson Elementary School now, after stints at Crockett Middle School and HEP High School. She also volunteers as a part-time coach for the Steinert High girls’ soccer team, working on technical things. She previously served as an assistant coach for the Spartans, but has taken a step back.
At the same time, Gmitter-Pittaro keeps up with two children who seem to have inherited much from her and husband Chris Pittaro, a former Major League Baseball player. Son CJ played a key role this summer for the Nottingham Babe Ruth 13-year-old All-Stars that reached the Mid-Atlantic tournament in Atlantic City and finished one win away from advancing to the Babe Ruth World Series.
Daughter Gianna made the All-Colonial Valley Conference girls’ soccer team as a Steinert High freshman last year, and has already drawn looks from college coaches. Gianna’s Match Fit U16 team is one of just two Elite Clubs National League squads in New Jersey. ECNL is one of the top—if not the top—developmental programs for female soccer players in the United States. ECNL events draw hundreds of coaches, providing a good showcase for players like Gianna.
Chris Pittaro, meanwhile, has continued to rise in the front office of the Oakland Athletics baseball club. He has served as special assistant to general manager Billy Beane since 2011, and spends eight months of the year on the road, scouting future Major Leaguers. He had been in the Netherlands this summer, and has Korea and Japan on his itinerary before the end of the season. Pittaro spends the offseason—November to February—at home in Hamilton.
A former Steinert star, Chris has been with the A’s front office since 2002, and earned a mention in Michael Lewis’ book about the A’s, “Moneyball.” He played in MLB with the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins in the mid-1980s.
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