Editor’s Note: This post was submitted by Evan Eyster, the newest contributor to Indomitable City Soccer. Follow him on Twitter here.
After Defender of the Year, the most wide open award category this season, comes Coach of the Year, arguably the most open and shut case. Before I get to the nominees and choosing my pick though, let’s identify a big snub from the nominees: Orange County Blues coach Oliver Wyss.
How Wyss didn’t make the cut for Coach of the Year I will never know. As impressive as some performances were from the nominated coaches, what he did with Orange County was amazing. If he had been nominated the choice for this award would be much more difficult. That being said, he didn’t make it so its no longer a two horse race. This should be the biggest slam dunk of the year for awards.
There are two types of coaches nominated this year: the first year coach on a new team who did well (James O’Connor of Louisville and Steve Trittschuh of Colorado Springs) and then two returning coaches who improved (Bob Lilley of Rochester and Jimmy Nielsen of OKC). Unless a team at least made the finals and preferably won, I have a very hard time giving the coach of the year to a first year team outside of some extenuating circumstances such as playing with a team that is noticeably below average. While deep runs next year from Colorado Springs and Louisville can change things, I have to pass on either of O’Connor or Trittschuh getting my vote this year.
That brings us to Lilley and Nielsen. Both returned teams that underperformed the previous year to make deep playoff runs, with OKC going down to LA in the Western Conference Finals and Rochester winning the championship. So the first point goes to Lilley, seeing as how his team did better than Nielsen’s team did.
Another thing to take into consideration is what teams had to work with. We saw OKC’s Newton take third place in Keeper of the Year, Konig taking a first team honor, and Evans taking a second team honor. On the Rochester side we saw Miller take keeper of the year, with Walls (surprisingly to me) and Van De Casteele joining him on the first team. I would give the edge to Nielsen in this category.
Finally I want to look at improvements. Rochester improved the most from 2014, ending up with 23 more points in the 2015 season. Second was Orange County, which is why I would have given a nomination to Wyss, improving 19 points. The third most improved team was Oklahoma City, improving 15 points.
So to me, Coach of the Year has to go to Bob Lilley. He won the championship and took a massive step up from the 2014 season. While he may have had more quality pieces to work with than Nielsen did, the results he obtained were spectacular.
Winner: Bob Lilley (ROC)
Runner Up: Jimmy Nielsen (OKC)
Stay tuned to Indomitable City Soccer for more of Evan’s picks for the 2015 USL Awards as the week goes on.
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