North Harford alumnus Aidan Riordan is taking the newly opened head coach position on the coaching staff of the varsity girls soccer team. He will be assisted in coaching by Ryan O’Leary and Kassie Dieter, both alumni as well. 

     In the past, Riordan “would help out in a limited capacity” when he was in college. He would run “summer training,” coach “the summer league,” and run the preseason camp for the team. Once Riordan graduated from college, he “was able to officially join the coaching staff as an assistant coach.” Since the new coach is also a teacher at Patterson Mill Middle School, he was only able to make it to a few practices last season. Due to this, Riordan felt that his role on the coaching staff was limited to a “game management aspect.”

    Riordan has been playing soccer since he was a kid. He has played club soccer and then played in high school as a Hawk. In college, Riordan “started to go into coaching with HFC and North Harford.” He then went into refereeing; he has refereed “youth, high school, college, and adult soccer.” 

     He is “most excited about working with a very talented and hard working group of girls to develop them to play at a high level.” Riordan is ready for the season to begin allowing him to implement “a style of play that will help set [the team] apart from most of the” other high schools in the area.

     Riordan said that he chose his assistant coaches accordingly because it was important for him to “bring in young coaches who still play the game, played the game at a high level [college or further], and care about the long term success of the program.” He added that O’Leary and Dieter, along with himself, “want to see this program continue to grow and be competitive.”

     “The biggest change the school can expect to see” to the program “is a more structured summer training program and expectations,” Riordan added. The new coach also wants “to build a strong camaraderie between the JV and varsity teams by supporting” one another through “occasional joint practices, and participating in events out of school and off the soccer field.”

     The new coach wants to “build a strong competitive team culture where the girls have fun at practice, get along very well, but are also super competitive.” Riordan wants the team to work hard at practice to earn their playing time. He has hopes that hard work at practice will translate to the games as well. Along with that, Riordan thinks that the team has the ability to “be one of the best teams in the county.” Overall, Riordan just wants “to continue to make” the team “a well respected team in the county, while developing all the players and having fun.”