Blodgett, Williams Join Sky Blue FC Coaching Staff
Sky Blue Soccer announced today that Paul Blodgett and Mark Williams will join the coaching staff for Sky Blue FC – the New Jersey/New York franchise for Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS). Sky Blue FC will kick off the first-ever WPS season in 2009.
Blodgett will serve as the Goalkeeper Coach for Sky Blue FC’s inaugural season and Williams will be the Strength & Conditioning Coach. The two new Sky Blue FC coaches are co-founders of the newly established Athlete Development Institute (ADI) – a New Jersey-based sports training company that emphasizes the development of the athlete through position-specific training.
The founder of the highly successful Paul Blodgett Goalkeeper Training School, Blodgett brings 30 years of coaching and teaching experience with goalkeepers. He previously served as the goalkeeper coach for Rutgers University working with multiple All-Americans and future professionals. A USSF “B” License holder, Blodgett currently serves as the New Jersey Youth Soccer Director of Goalkeeping for Girls.
On the senior women’s soccer level, Blodgett accomplished two highly successful stints in recent years. In 2005, he served as the Goalkeeper Coach with the New Jersey Wildcats and helped that team amass a 13-1 record before capturing the W-League Championship. He joined Sky Blue Soccer’s W-League team, Jersey Sky Blue, in its inaugural season in 2007 and that team posted a 12-2 mark. In both of those seasons, each team led the W-League in least amount of goals allowed in the regular season – two in 14 games for the Wildcats in 2005 and six in 14 games for Sky Blue in 2007.
“Paul comes to us with a wealth of goalkeeping experience and he has been successful at all levels of youth and collegiate coaching,” said Sky Blue FC General Manager and Head Coach Ian Sawyers. “His ability to combine high-level coaching with his teaching skills will benefit not only our professional team, but will allow us to offer some of the highest-level women's goalkeeping clinics in the country. Paul is also a person of great character and integrity and will serve Sky Blue FC and the Sky Blue Soccer School with top level professionalism.”
Williams is the founder of Williams Soccer Performance Systems and has been a strength and conditioning coach for over 10 years. During that span, he worked with soccer players at all levels, including Tim Howard (Manchester United and Everton FC) and Juan Pablo Angel and Jon Conway (New York Red Bulls). He also worked with several current Olympians from the US and Canada and players from Major League Soccer (MLS) as well as many collegiate and high school all-Americans.
A former All-Conference goalkeeper at Montclair State University, Williams served as the Strength & Conditioning Coach for three seasons with the MetroStars of MLS. He worked with Jersey Sky Blue in its first season in the W-League in 2007, helping that team to a successful debut. Williams was also the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for the New York Dragons of the Arena Football League for two seasons.
“Mark has developed a unique and powerful program for soccer conditioning, and he is on the cutting edge of new techniques in speed, strength and overall conditioning of professional athletes,” Sawyers said. “He has worked with some of the biggest names in the game and both Sky Blue FC and the Sky Blue Soccer School will benefit from his knowledge. His ability to break down the soccer components and energize the training systems will allow our players and the younger players who attend our clinics to be better equipped to avoid injuries and produce peak performance.”
Sky Blue FC kicks off the first season of WPS in 2009. Season tickets for Sky Blue FC are on sale now by visiting Sky Blue Soccer on the internet at www.SkyBlueFC.com or by calling 888-SBFC-TIX.
For more information on the Sky Blue Soccer School, please send an e-mail to school@skybluesoccer.com.