Erin McGinley used to be able to see the whole field.
Now, she’ll be coaching the whole field.
The former standout goalie at Wyoming Seminary and King’s College has been hired to begin her high school head coaching career at Wyoming Area.
“Some of my good coaching colleagues that are in Division I, II and III at the college level were goalkeepers at the college level,” McGinley said. “They are head coaches of big programs.
“The thing about being a goalkeeper is that we saw the whole field. We got to kind of dictate the structure of the game and we saw what everybody’s responsibility was and had to know every position the field. So, while I was never a forward, I knew what the responsibility of the forward was.”
McGinley has assisted with coaching goalies on the Wyoming Seminary high school team while serving as head coach of the junior high program. She also has experience coaching teams and running a program as co-owner of the Pennsylvania Elite Field Hockey Club for the past five years.
The Warriors will also have a first-time high school head coach in boys soccer for the fall.
Like, McGinley, Rick Branco was an all-state high school player who continued to earn honors in college and then has put his knowledge of the sport by training and coaching ambitious, up-and-coming players.
“My primary focus is on the current varsity,” said Branco, technical director of the Northeast Attack, a Back Mountain-based club team. “But, I also have eyes on the junior high to start developing players at an earlier age.”
The co-ed junior high program at Wyoming Area has nearly 50 players.
McGinley was a two-time Times Leader Player of the Year at Wyoming Seminary where she led an unbeaten state championship team in 2006. She was a two-time Middle Atlantic Conference first-team all-star while at King’s.
Branco was the all-time leading scorer at Dallas when he graduated in 2002. He played on scholarship at Queens University, an NCAA Division II school in Charlotte, N.C.
Both McGinley and Branco were all-state players in high school.
McGinley said Melanie Leo, a former Crestwood players who played on the Division I level at Fairfield University, will be her assistant.
Through junior high, high school, club, Keystone Games and Futures, McGinley has familiarity with several players in the Wyoming Area program, but thinks both players and coaches should consider it a fresh start this summer and during the preseason.
“I don’t want them to think I have all this pre-conceived knowledge of them and that’s where decisions are going to be based,” McGinley said. “They’re getting a new coach and I’m getting a new team, so it’s kind of a clean slate for both of us.”
Branco gets a second chance to serve as coach of the Warriors. He was appointed early in 2016, only to have to resign because of a job change last season before ever coaching a game.
“I’m extremely excited,” he said.
Branco’s training included preparing six players who were on the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association State Team this year.
McGinley got to work with many of her players and see the program’s future during a youth camp Monday through Thursday on the team’s home field.
Branco will get to do the same this week when the school’s boys and girls soccer programs will conduct a youth camp Monday through Thursday at Tenth Street Field in West Wyoming.
McGinley takes over a team that had its best season in school history in 2015 but slipped to 6-8 in the Wyoming Valley Conference last fall.
The boys soccer team went 2-12 in the WVC.
