By Greg Bates
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – Earlier in the season, William Vande Castle was curious how many soccer games he had coached in his career.
With his son Nick nearby, Vande Castle added up the seasons and games.
“All of a sudden, he goes, ‘Yeah, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to get to 500 games,’” Nick Vande Castle said. “He was surprised he got there, and he’s proud of it.”
William Vande Castle, an assistant coach for the Notre Dame Academy varsity boys’ soccer team, hit No. 500 Oct. 12 when the Tritons lost to Sturgeon Bay, 2-0.
“It wasn’t something I thought about,” said Vande Castle, who is in his 19th full season at Notre Dame. “It was simply another game. Although everybody knew it – the players were excited about it.”
Prior to the match, the Notre Dame players presented him with a game ball signed by the team.
Midway through the 2000 season, Vande Castle began helping with the Tritons junior varsity squad.
The next year, he became the JV assistant.
Then, in 2002, Vande Castle became a varsity assistant, where he has been since.
He remembers a lot about his coaching career, but his first game in August 2000 escapes him.
“You don’t think it’s that many,” Vande Castle said. “Five hundred is a big number, but you take them one at a time and try not to look back too far.”
He has been an assistant under three head coaches during his tenure.
He knows his role and has tried to perfect it.
“To be an assistant, the job is to follow and facilitate,” Vande Castle said. “I follow the head coach’s lead, do what I can to implement their system and their strategy and offer points along the way. I’ve learned to take a lot of notes.”
Vande Castle will file his notes away and go back to them the next time Notre Dame takes on the same opponent.
“If they had a junior who was a good player the year before on another team, you check the stats,” he said. “You talk about the style of play they had the year before and what kind of formations they ran. You build up a historical record of all the teams you played. Coaches tend to follow a similar format every year, so you get an understanding of how you did against them and where you can improve. Taking notes is helpful.”
Nick Vande Castle, who is a Notre Dame junior varsity boys’ soccer co-head coach, is fascinated with his dad’s tedious note-taking skills.
He’ll keep track of shots, corner kicks, substitutions and how many minutes each player logs.
“Not every coach wants to do this every game,” Nick Vande Castle said. “He’s willing to do the not-so-fun parts of being a coach. The head coach is the one who gets the praise or the punishment if it’s a bad or good year.”
Vande Castle wasn’t a soccer player growing up but picked up the game later in life.
He coached Nick, who graduated from Notre Dame in 2010, at the club level from age 10 until high school.
“It’s exciting to coach with him,” said Vande Castle, whose daughter, Katharine, is the junior varsity girls’ soccer coach at Green Bay Preble. “He’s a big soccer fan, and he has a lot of good observations and insights.”
Being able to coach together has brought the father-son duo closer.
“We work together, and he was my coach, so we were close through soccer back then,” said Nick, who is in his first season coaching at his alma mater. “When I went to school and left the area and came back, it got us another connection we had in the past we lost with time.”
The two are close through soccer but also through their professionals.
William owns Vande Castle, S.C., a law practice in Green Bay.
Nick is one of the attorneys at the firm.
Life is a little different at the office compared to the practice field, but the two get along great at both locations.
“It’s relaxing, but it’s nerve-racking at times with the games,” Nick said. “When we’re at practices, we’re separate with the varsity doing their own thing, and we are doing our own thing. We get together at games and talk about strategies together.”
For the past several seasons, Vande Castle, 65, has taken his coaching duties year by year with retirement on the horizon.
“November and December, it settles down after the season,” William said. “I’ve come to learn not to make a decision at the end of the year but wait until spring.”
He noted he’ll gradually fade out his duties as a coach.
“When that is, I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Vande Castle said. “I have no specific exit strategy yet.”