Mary Nagy taught hundreds of students the meaning of the word synonym in her time as an elementary school teacher at New Hope School.
In moving from the fourth to the eighth grade, Nagy had some of the same students she taught in elementary school four years later. She ultimately transferred to be a teacher at New Hope High School, where she was forced to decide if she wanted to become the school’s girls soccer coach. If she said no, there was a possibility her daughters, Aimee and Krysta, who were sophomores, wouldn’t get to play soccer.
“I went home and asked my daughters how serious they were about soccer and they said, ‘Mom, we love it. We really want to play,’ ” Nagy said.
Nagy, who is from Gramercy, Louisiana, had no idea that decision would lead her to become the longest-tenured coach currently at New Hope High and synonymous with soccer at the school. On Sunday, Nagy announced that run will end after the 2018-19 school year because her husband, Jeff, is taking a new job effective Sept. 1. She said they likely will move south to be closer to his work in Mobile, Alabama.
“I was just a soccer mom who had to learn quickly what to do,” said Nagy, who teaches English and is in her 33rd year as a teacher, and 23rd at New Hope. She has been the girls soccer coach at the school for 15 years.
The New Hope High girls soccer program has blossomed under Nagy and assistant coach Will Taylor. In 2010, the program made its first playoff appearance. New Hope earned what Nagy believes was its first playoff victory a year later (against Oxford). The team won first-round playoff matches the next two seasons, but it couldn’t get past Ridgeland in the second round. In 2014, New Hope beat Oxford to clear that hurdle and then defeated Lewisburg to advance to its first state title match, where it lost to West Jones 2-0 in the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) Class 5A championship.
In 2015, New Hope overcame injuries, personnel losses, and lineup changes to get back to the Class 5A North State title match, where it lost to Germantown 1-0.
New Hope has continued to send players to the next level. In January, Maddie Beard and Chrisi Godfrey signed to play soccer at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit.
Despite that success, Nagy doesn’t see the win-loss column as where she made her biggest impact. Instead she said she and Taylor have remained focused on preparing young ladies for life after soccer and after high school. She said her goal always has been to help students become the “person they want to be in this lifetime” and “to make an impact on what they’re going to do in their lives, not with their feet on the field.”
New Hope High Principal Matt Smith said he is “super sad” to lose Nagy as a teacher and as a coach.
“We are extremely proud of everything she has done with the girls soccer team through the years,” Smith said. “She has accomplished a lot over the years and she is going to be hard to replace. Beside that she is rock star in the classroom, so she is going to be doubly hard to replace.”
Taylor, who worked as an assistant coach/volunteer helper with Mary Wiygul when the girls soccer team started, said it will be a challenge to find someone who fought for the program as much as Nagy did. He said there were several times when the program was not far from being ended, but that it had an advocate in Nagy who did whatever she could to keep it going. In fact, he said there have been numerous times in the last 15 years when Nagy stepped up financially to help players.
“Mary has always considered and pushed that the program is a family,” Taylor said. “We have always said no matter what your problem off the field or in the classroom when walk inside this gate you have coaches and teammates who are going to be supportive of you and protect you, and they would have a sanctuary where they felt safe.
“Mary has been incredible for many, many, many, many students, boys and girls, who have come to her when they have problems and she handles it like a mother. She is very motherly and fights for them and stands up for them and cries with them and nurtures them and sees to the needs of many.”
Nagy said she has been “blessed” to work with Taylor. They agreed their relationship has clicked because they share a love for the kids and they have grown to learn and love soccer together.
“Mary works hard at whatever she does, which is why she is a good teacher,” Taylor said. “She cares about her students and players. She works at being a good teacher, and she worked hard at learning the game and learning how to coach and what was needed.”
For all of the things she has learned about soccer, Nagy is most proud of her contributions to the lives of so many boys and girls in and out of the classroom and on soccer fields. She said she hasn’t had time to read all of the Facebook comments in response to her announcement, but she will. When she does, Nagy will smile and know she became synonymous with New Hope and soccer because she loved and cared hundreds of children like a mother.
“I was a mom who said, ‘Kick the ball, go chase the ball.’ You learn very quickly that is not quite right,” Nagy said. “I expected three years of it, in all honesty. In those three years, I learned to love the sport. I still couldn’t play it. Not only did I learn to love it, but I learned it. I learned from infancy because I knew nothing. I had to study, look on line for drills, talk to coaches. It became a part of me.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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