After all, he's coached at all three Class AA schools in the Garden City as well as countless competitive youth programs. He is also the voice heard over the P.A. at University of Montana soccer home matches. Those who have been involved in Missoula's soccer community from its meager beginnings, know the sport might not be as widespread locally today if Stein hadn't landed here.
Growing up in the shadows of Manhattan on Long Island, Stein discovered the game during soccer's explosion in the late 1970s. It was a time when Pele became the face of the game as he joined the NASL's New York Cosmos and opened America's eyes to the beauty of soccer, something the rest of the world had known for quite some time.
“I always wanted to play at the collegiate level,” Stein said. “But when I came out here, I just really fell in love with Montana. I decided that I liked soccer a whole lot, but I wasn't going to be that successful at the level I wanted to be playing at.”
Stein arrived in Missoula to attend the University of Montana in 1980 and found a successful UM club team to play on, coached by Ralph Serrette, who still roams the sidelines, but now for the Stevensville High School boys.
Soon after, a man who Stein refers to as the grandfather of Missoula youth soccer, Mike Pantalione, introduced him to coaching by enticing him to lead a sixth-grade YMCA squad. Now Pantalione is in his 19th season coaching at Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz., and has the the highest winning percentage in men's intercollegiate soccer history at any level. Pantalione became a pretty good mentor to Stein in his early 20s.
“From there I started thinking about coaching as a profession or a vocation,” Stein said. “So I got my national license and at that time, Ravi DeSilva started the Missoula Strikers program and I took the 16-year old boys.”
Pantalione then got the head job at Jesuit High School in Portland and took Stein along as an assistant before Stein was hired as the head coach of the women's program at Linfield College where he took the reins and won District II Coach of the Year in his first of two season there.
“Running a college program, even NAIA, was just great,” he said. “In two seasons I really learned a lot.”
But Stein and his wife, Nancy McCourt, wanted to return to Missoula and it just so happened that in 1991, high school soccer began in Montana. With his experience coaching women at the collegiate level, Stein landed the girls' job at Missoula Big Sky and a teaching position at Victor.
After getting a teaching job at Missoula Hellgate, he took over the Knights boys' program, where he stayed for eight years.
When his tenure there was over he began teaching at Missoula Sentinel, but stayed away from coaching at the high-school level until last season. That's when current Hellgate boys' coach Jay Anderson reeled him back in to coach the JV team, an experience Stein called the best of his coaching career.
This season, the veteran coach with the thin renegade braid that runs from his right ear nearly to his waist, took over the Missoula Sentinel boys from veteran head coach Larry Ashmore.
On his 27-year journey from Bell More, N.Y., Stein has influenced more players than he can count. In mere minutes of talking with him, his passion for for the game as well as his current and former understudies is obvious.
Stein even holds immense respect for his competition. Tuesday, his Spartans fell 6-1 to Kalispell Flathead after all-state forward Luke Fischer netted five second-half goals. Following such a lopsided loss, most coaches would cringe at the mention of the star player on the other side. That's not the case with Stein.
“I watched a kid yesterday, that Fischer kid out of Kalispell,” he said. “And I'm just like, that's a Division I prospect. Here's a kid in Montana that can play with anybody. He was smart, he was strong and he was fast. I was watching him and I was going, damn, that's what we're going for. He's going to carry the torch for soccer players in the state.”
Stein regularly attends weddings of his former players and even keeps in touch with members of his first YMCA team. He's used the game of soccer to teach life lessons and always gives credit along the way for those in his past who taught him the game he holds so dear.
“For me, it's always been that I feel like I owe a debt to the people who guided me and coached me in soccer,” Stein said. “For them, I want to represent the game of soccer in as positive a way as possible.”
As soccer has grown by leaps and bounds in Missoula and across Montana since Stein's arrival, there are countless players who owe Stein the same debt of gratitude he has for his mentors. The majority of those who have played a match with or against him consider themselves lucky.
“I've spent a lot of time reading, watching, reffing and, coaching and I've paid more than my fair share of dues,” Stein said. “I love the game, so I'm going to contribute as much as I can and I'm going to try to get these guys to coach, to play, to referee and to just be good ambassadors of the game because soccer is just amazing.”
Reporter Michael Heinbach can be reached at 523-5209 or by e-mail at michael.heinbach@lee.net.
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