Riverhead High School names new boys soccer coach

The Riverhead varsity boys soccer team has never made the playoffs in over 50 years of its existence. New coach, Nic DeZenzo, is looking to change that, but he’s well aware it won’t happen overnight.

When he got hired as a fifth grade teacher in Riverhead Central School district four years ago, he reached out to Athletic Director Brian Sacks and expressed his interest in coaching the soccer team if the job ever opened up.

“I introduced myself, gave him my coaching resume and said that it would be a dream of mine to be able to coach a team in the district I teach in,” DeZenzo said. “But I didn’t want to step on any toes. Evan Philcox was there, and all I ever heard about was how great a job he was doing there and how he created a better culture, so I put it on the back burner. But when he decided to step away from the job in January, I knew I had to put in for [it].”

DeZenzo’s soccer resume speaks for itself. He’s played professionally, coached at a collegiate level, and coached travel teams and high school teams alike from New Hampshire and Massachusetts — where he is originally from — to Long Island.  

After four years playing soccer at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., the last of which he earned the 2007-2008 Colby-Sawyer Athlete of the Year, DeZenzo went to Australia to start his professional soccer career. He played a year for the Kangaroo Point Rovers in Brisbane, then came back home to play for the Mass Twisters in the Major Indoor Soccer League for a year, before returning to Brisbane for his final professional season as a member of the Bayside United Football Club. He was named vice-captain during his time at Bayside.

“From a playing standpoint, it was amazing,” DeZenzo said. “I was exposed to different countries and learned how they played the game and how they coached the game.”

Though he had an opportunity to stay another year and play in Brisbane, he wanted to come back home to his family and get into education and coaching.

“I come from a long line of educators,” DeZenzo said. “My mother was a teacher, and my grandmother was a teacher. I knew teaching was always my true calling.”

While in Australia, DeZenzo got a call from a high school coach of one of the teams he used to play against growing up. Within a week, he was on the field at the Tilton School in Tilton, N.H., for a variety of roles over the next four years.

After earning his NSCAA National Diploma and Director of Coaching Certification in 2014, DeZenzo landed a job as an assistant coach for the women’s Division I soccer program at University of New Hampshire. During his tenure there, the team won their first America East Championship in school history.

The University of New Hampshire position allowed him an opportunity to show his worth and ended up landing a job as the head women’s soccer coach at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, N.Y. It was one of the reasons DeZenzo decided to move to Long Island, aside from the fact that his wife, Analiese, was born and raised in Hauppauge.

“I always knew we were going to move down here eventually,” DeZenzo said. “Once I got a job at St. Joseph’s, it’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. And we’ve been here ever since.”

In his first season at St. Joseph’s College, the team won its first conference championship in school history. 

After his time as St. Joseph’s, DeZenzo returned to high school soccer to coach The Knox School, a private school in Nissequogue. The team hadn’t won a game in five years before he came to the program. In his first season that trend continued; they went 0-12. But the in the years after, they made the playoffs and went all the way to the semifinals two years in a row. DeZenzo was named Private School Athletic Association Coach of the Year in both seasons.

DeZenzo has been coaching in the travel club soccer space leading up to this opportunity at Riverhead. “It’s been fun traveling all over the country for soccer,” DeZenzo said. “But my kids are getting older, and it’s time I’m home on the weekends.”

Riverhead posted a 2-14 record last season, but DeZenzo believes the talent is there. 

“I’ve been getting calls from other travel coaches congratulating me on getting the job here,” DeZenzo said. “They’ve also had very high praise for the kids we have here at the program already, so that’s amazing to hear.”

Wins are the ultimate goal for this program, but winning starts at the youth levels, and DeZenzo is committing to being part of it every step of the way.

“I’ve been in touch with the coaches at Riverhead F.C., a travel team out here, and have gone to practices, which is a great way for local kids to get exposure,” DeZenzo said. “But we need more. We need these kids to be connected before they get [to] the high school level. I am going to build this thing from the ground up. In our first training sessions, we gathered about 100 kids from every level. It was my first glimpse of what we have here, and I came away very encouraged.”

Though Riverhead may not win a championship in their first year like his other stops on his coaching tree, it’s a blank slate with plenty of history to be made in the years to come. If history has anything to say, maybe there is a championship in Riverhead’s future.