Podcast: Clark coach Matt Colombini on specialization pros, cons

On the latest episode of the "Chasing the Goal" podcast, the guys are joined by new Clark University coach Matt Colombini.

On this episode of the “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Owen Hart are joined by new Clark University head coach Matt Colombini.

Colombini took over the Courgars after nine seasons at the helm of Emerson College. At Emerson, Colombini produced the most wins in the program’s history. The 2022 season was his most successful campaign, as he compiled a 12-6 record and led the Lions to the NEWMAC tournament for the first time.

Prior to Emerson, Colombini served as the assistant coach and defensive coordinator at Colby College in 2016. Prior to Colby, he was the assistant and then interim head coach at Wheaton College. During his three seasons at Wheaton, the Lyons made the NEWMAC tournament twice and had 12 players named to the NEWMAC All-Conference team.

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Kyle Devitte: Coach, you were at Emerson for a very long time, a place where I also coached for a little bit. Emerson’s very different, I think, compared to a lot of schools that it gets compared to. People are just like, “Oh, another liberal arts school.” But it’s not, really. You need to do things like audition tapes and you have to send in different materials to get in there. What was your time there like? 

Matt Colombini: It was awesome, being in downtown Boston, having something unique to recruit to. We had a certain type of player and student that we were looking for. Guys who were interested in film. Guys wanted to get into sports media. We knew what we were looking for. And with that, conversely, there were times we’d have differen conversations. Someone would say, “I want to do business,” or “I want to do something in the sciences.” And we’d be like, “You need to look anywhere else. This isn’t the place for you.”

But it was a great experience of being able to build the program there. We had awesome players and really good assistants. We got it from a place where they hadn’t won a game in a couple of years and had never won a conference game. The roster was incredibly small, and we just found the right people there to get it to where we made the NEWMAC playoffs, which is not an easy thing to do. We had some success and really some really good players over the course of those years.

Owen Hart: You mentioned that you played goalie. I like having a goalie on the podcast because, as Kyle and I have stated, you guys are interesting characters and a perspective that we just will never understand. Kyle and I have talked about how we get our goalies off the street. They were a different athlete two weeks ago, and we got them to play goalie.

My JV goalie was an attackman his freshman year. Then he switched to playing goalie and he has been great. But do you feel like that’s a (potential) for burnout? What’s your perspective on sports specialization at a young age?

Matt Colombini: In general, I don’t like the specialization of younger athletes, whether it’s in a sport or in a position across the board. Growing up, my dad coached football, basketball, softball and lacrosse. So I was just around different things. I played Little League baseball; we played everything, and we just learned how to be athletes, I think.

I do think there’s some benefit, if you want to be a goalie, starting and getting used to that and learning from that because it is a little unique. But having the experience of playing with a short-stick is really important in just handling the ball, and you being well-rounded. Where I really don’t like it in lacrosse, in particular, is when guys want to be face-off guys as fifth- or sixth-graders; there’s nothing wrong with that. You should go to the Face-off Factory and get as many reps as you can. But you also need to learn how to handle the ball and play.

@TheKyleDevitte
kyle.devitte@laxjournal.com

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