Some of the career numbers for longtime Woodsville High boys soccer coach Mike Ackerman — 41 seasons, 12 wins shy of career win No. 500 — might lack poetic symmetry while coinciding with his pending retirement. Yet for Ackerman and his wife, Glenna, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
Both will be 65 at the end of the school year, and each has chosen to leave longstanding educational posts, Glenna as a reading specialist at Woodsville Elementary School and Mike after 38 years as athletic director to complement more than four decades on the soccer sidelines, as well as many years as senior class advisor.
The moves will allow the travel-loving Ackermans to indulge more often in trips and to spend more time with their two young grandchildren, 7-year-old Ethan and 3½-year-old Gavin. When asked if he’s already feeling nostalgic about leaving the Engineers, Ackerman wouldn’t bite.
“Next year at this time, I’ll be on a beach somewhere,” said Ackerman in a Friday phone interview. “I talked to (Glenna) about it, and we both thought it was the right time. I remember talking to (former longtime Hanover High boys soccer coach) George Merrill. He had (395) wins before he retired and people said to him, ‘Don’t you want to coach one more year and get to 400?’ He told me, ‘Mike, when it’s time to step down, you’ll just know it,’ and he was right.”
Ackerman isn’t leaving much on the table. His teams were consistent contenders no matter what division they played in, reaching the NHIAA Class A final in 1979, the Class M final 10 years later and capturing back-to-back Class S championships in 2004 and ‘05. They’ve made the Class S/Division IV quarterfinals 10 times and the semis three times since since then, pushing top-ranked Portsmouth Christian to the brink in a 2-1 quarterfinal loss as the No. 9 seed this year.
With a strong voice and interpersonal skills that connected as well with fellow administrators and coaching peers as it did players, Ackerman’s 488 wins are the second-most in New Hampshire high school history behind Gilford High legend David Pinkham (632).
A five-time New Hampshire Soccer Coaches Association coach of the year recipient, he’s a member of that organization’s Hall of Fame as well as that of the New Hampshire Coaches Association and National Soccer Coaches Association.
Ackerman’s accolades continued on Sunday with his induction into the NHIAA Hall of Fame.
“It’s a nice honor,” said Ackerman, who’s also coached New Hampshire in the Lions Cup Twin State All Star Game several times. “There have been a lot of them over the years.”
Those asked about Ackerman’s coaching virtues unequivocally brought up his ability to maximize the potential of players, no matter their disposition or pedigree. He prompted those without much confidence to gain it through effort and encouragement, and those with arrogance to dial it back for the good of the team.
No one was above Ackerman’s demands to practice and play with supreme effort, not even the state’s all-time leading scorer. Dimitri Kapotis finished with a New Hampshire record 137 career goals, but not before Ackerman got him to match the gusto of teammates.
“Freshman year, I was the team’s leading scorer and thought I was hot stuff,” said Kapotis, a 2006 Woodsville grad who went on to play a post graduate year at Tilton School and later Plymouth State University. “I wasn’t going all out in practices, and I got benched for the second half of the season. That taught me a valuable lesson.”
Ackerman successfully fostered a strong soccer culture in Woodsville, already home to thriving boys basketball and baseball programs under the leadership of another Hall of Famer, John Bagonzi, when Ackerman came aboard in the 1970s.
Ackerman jumpstarted youth teams that instructed players as young as 3- and 4-years-old, taking steps to ensure students of the game throughout the lower levels were exposed to the same fundamental principles that they’d experience with the Engineers. The techniques and strategies were always adaptable, depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. The work rate and sportsmanlike mentality is what had to be unflapable.
“I think he saw what Bagonzi was doing and said, ‘We can have that with soccer here, too,’ ” said Matt Ackerman, the coach’s youngest son who, like older brother Ryan, went on to play at NCAA Division II Bentley College (now Bentley University) in Waltham, Mass. “He did a lot to introduce the game to kids at a young age so that they’d become great friends on and off the field and grow up through high school as a cohesive unit.”
Defender and 2000 graduate Dave Robinson was inspired by his coach’s commitment to continuity.
“Seeing the way he built everything from the ground up really made me want to get into coaching,” said Robinson, who led the boys team at D-IV rival Profile from 2006-14. “He was all about community and getting the best out of everyone. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, we were still in Class M and we had about 300 kids in our high school, going neck-and-neck against schools with 600-700 kids. The fact we were so competitive against them was because of everything coach Ackerman built over the years.”
As a motivator, Ackerman wasn’t shy about letting the team know when he sensed it wasn’t playing to the high standards it had set. He wasn’t an in-your-face yeller, but he firmly chided when appropriate.
“He’d talk to you about the gravity of what it meant to have the season on the line in a playoff game, everything we’ve been working for all season,” Robinson said. “He knew when the right moments were to let us know we weren’t playing to our potential, and guys really responded to that.”
Ackerman’s contemporaries over the years have admired him as much as players — even when their teams couldn’t beat him. Former 36-year Gorham High coach Bill Goodrich, now the school’s third-year athletic director, played against Ackerman twice a year for many years within the Class S/Division IV northern schedule.
“They played hard and were fundamentally skilled on both ends of the field, every single time we played them,” Goodrich said. “They were always prepared. That’s a reflection of Mike.”
Goodrich has turned to Ackerman in recent years for administrative guidance.
“He’s been awesome, helping out a lot whenever I’ve had a question. He’s great about sharing his ideas,” Goodrich said. “At A.D. meetings, he’s always been a good voice for Division IV. We’re going to miss him.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.