New soccer coach to lead Port girls

Kyle Quintell is jumping into the Port Washington soccer scene cleats first.

Quintell was recently named the high school girls’ head coach and the director of coaching for the Port Washington Soccer Club.

Although he graduated from college last spring, this isn’t his first foray into the field.

Quintell is the graduate assistant men’s soccer coach at Lakeland University in Sheboygan, was assistant girls’ soccer coach at Kohler High School for two years, coached seventh-grade boys’ basketball at

Howards Grove and coached freshman girls’ basketball at Fond du Lac High School for two years.

“I have a pretty good resume for just graduating college last May,” Quintell said.

He has been interested in sports since he was a child growing up in Genoa, Ill., a city of about 5,000 people that’s a 15-minute drive from Northern Illinois University.

That proximity mattered when Quintell, a basketball, baseball and soccer player in high school, joined the Northern Illinois Football Club. The coaching staff came from NIU.

“We were getting Division 1 coaching. Our development, I feel, was very fast compared to other clubs,” Quintell said, “but it was more tight knit and family oriented than clubs in Milwaukee.”

Quintell played outside midfield and winger in high school, but Marian University coach Craig Peltonen, now in his 33rd year  at the school, moved him to outside back.

“I was better suited at that position,” Quintell said. “I’m pretty quick. I can get up and down the field a lot but I wasn’t a major scorer,” Quintell said.

While he has played three sports and coached two, soccer is Quintell’s favorite. He likes how tactical it is.

“One thing different about soccer than any other sport is it’s 90 minutes, two halves, no timeouts,” he said in comparing it to football, basketball and baseball, all which have several stoppages during games.

“Soccer is pretty much free range for each half. You don’t really get much guidance at all. There are boatloads of different formations, but not really any plays,” he said.

Now, Quintell, who has a bachelor’s degree in sports and recreation management and a minor in marketing and coaching, assists Lakeland head coach Rick Mobley, a former professional soccer player, with social media and other day-to-day operations, but he gets back on the field during scrimmages.

“I’m jumping in right away so I can kind of stay in shape,” he said.

Lakeland’s season ends next month, and Quintell will put all the experience he garnered to use when the Port Washington girls officially start practicing April 26.

He is already into the third week of contact days with the team, which has about 35 girls signed up.

“It’s awesome. We have the most signed up right now of all the spring sports in high school,” Quintell said.

He plans to emphasize the basics right off the bat.

“You should really focus on the fundamentals, especially as a first-year coach,” he said.

Quintell wants to fine tune skills such as being able to cross the ball with either foot as opposed to just one.

And he wants his team to be in game shape.

“One big thing I’m a believer in is fitness. There’s a big difference between being in shape and being in 90-minute soccer shape,” he said.

Aside from getting to know a new program, Quintell faces another challenge. None of the Port girls played high school soccer last season because spring sports were canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of his goals is for Port to win a regional title. Quintell already saw success at Kohler, helping the team set the school record for victories and advancing to the sectional final.

“I’m very competitive. The smallest thing for me, if it’s sprinting from one end line to another end line, I really like to push people. I will be encouraging you to beat the person next to you,” he said.

Quintell said he knows Port is in a tough conference with many opponents playing club soccer during the offseason, but “Port has a history of athletic backgrounds. Moving forward, I’ll be looking to utilize that.”

Quintell takes over for Phil Nawrocki, who last year was hired to replace Eric Liebergen, who retired to spend time with his family. Nawrocki never got to coach the Pirate girls due to the pandemic and has since sought a different job.