Chosen out of more than a thousand coaches around the state, the Michigan State Youth Soccer Association named Jim Furstenberg as 2005 Coach of the Year.
Furstenberg is the coach of last year's winning Northstar 88 team, a travel club for the region's best girls that ranked third in the state. He accepted the award on Saturday during a ceremony in Romulus that drew players and parents who are among his biggest fans.
Uncomfortable in the spotlight, Furstenberg tolerates it for "the ladies" and the cause: using soccer as a vehicle to teach about life. According to him and the Northstar organization's culture, winning is a byproduct of doing the other things right.
"We use soccer as a muse to inject life lessons for these ladies," said Furstenberg, who has coached with the Northstar organization for eight years. "They're so multitalented, it's not surprising that the same group of ladies have high grades and are involved in all sorts of things and are socially and civic minded, these players are attracted to Northstar."
"There's just a great group of players and parents, part of a family," he added.
Ten of his players from the 88 team are committed to playing next year at the collegiate level, on Division I, II or III teams. This amazing achievement reflects the Northstar history as well, as more than 50 players have gone on to play for colleges around the nation.
Lauren Donaghy, a West High School senior who will play soccer next year on a Division II team in Minnesota, praises Furstenberg's influence in her development as a player.
"It would have been really hard to become as good as I am without Coach," she said. "I think he made it possible for me, he's just always there for us."
Furstenberg began coaching soccer 13 years ago and his daughter, Jamie, is now a senior at West who played her last Northstar game in the fall. He also coaches a boys U-16 team as well as trains in the off season players at Traverse City West and Central and Suttons Bay high schools.
A volunteer like all the Northstar coaches, Furstenberg's high personal investment in coaching includes professional seminars to enhance his own skills and knowledge. Not to mention hours away from family, career and personal pursuits to work with the players.
"There's countless hours, it's all so intertwined with life that it's not something that you just do, it's integrated into you," said Furstenberg, who will coach a U-14 Northstar team next year.
The Northstar is a selective team and players must try out to join. The organization draws the best teen girl players from around northwestern Michigan and Furstenberg has worked with players who come from Petoskey or Suttons Bay three days a week for months for practices. The organization also has a Northstar Reserve team for promising players who are not yet up to the competitive team.
With all the negative influences out their tempting kids, Furstenberg sees soccer as a character builder that inoculates his players from taking the wrong path.
"We teach that it's OK to fail, the game is fraught with failures, but we care about what you do after you fail," he noted.
Darrel Rogers, founder of the Northstar organization in the mid 1990s, said that besides his dedication and knowledge, Furstenberg is about fun. He keeps soccer enjoyable for the players, devising an endless number of warm up games that drill but do not kill the fun.
"Jim is a role model for fun," said Rogers, who was the Michigan State Youth Soccer Association Coach of the Year in 1999. "He's got 10,000 fun games and it's like, 'Where did you get that?'"
"I roped him in, it was pretty evident that he was the kind of guy we wanted," he added.