Calm on the Outside: WTHS Boys Soccer Coach Shane Snyder is pictured during a recent Minutemen victory.
Don’t let Shane Snyder’s jovial, carefree, happy-go-lucky exterior fool you. Inside, his mind is racing, and his stomach is churning. And he can, and will, cry at the drop of a hat.
Turmoil, Tums, and Tears.
For Snyder, it’s been a winning combination.
Twenty-three years into his teaching career as a special education math teacher at Washington Township High School, 19 years into his coaching career (seven years as the head girls soccer coach (91-40-7) and 12 years as the head boys soccer coach (211-45-12, and counting), Snyder tallied his 300th career coaching win during a 4-0 win over Cherry Hill West on October 12, 2021. After leading the girls’ program to two Olympic Conference championships (2006, 2007), he has guided the Minutemen to six Conference titles, six South Jersey Group IV titles, three South Jersey Coaches Tournament crowns and incredibly three State Group IV Championships (2014, 2015, 2018). He has never recorded a losing season.
Still, win No. 300 was not on his radar.
“Winning 300 games is not something I got into coaching for, and I don’t really pay attention to it,” Snyder said. “It was neat to have parents and former players and other coaches reach out and say congratulations and to share some memories with them. That’s what I will remember.”
For Snyder, the youngest of Bill and Maryann Snyder’s three sons and part of an admittedly soccer-crazed family, the sport, as a player and a coach, has always been about family, fun and faces. His father, an All-American defender at Penn State who later coached Philadelphia’s Frankford High School to 11 straight public league championships, taught his boys Billy (former head soccer coach, now athletic director at Pennsauken High School), Jason (current head coach at Lindenwold High School) and Shane to “try our best, work hard, be honest and fair, respect the game and compete.” All three Snyder boys played at Pennsauken High and at the collegiate level (Billy at TCNJ; Jason at Rider University and York College; and Shane at Saint Joseph’s University).
“Soccer was all around us growing up,” Shane Snyder said. “It wasn’t forced. We always wanted more. I got into coaching because I love to be around people. I love to be around the sport. It is the perfect marriage of making connections with kids, building relationships, and being able to teach them about character building, working hard, having dedication and showing selflessness. I try to teach them a thing or two about soccer and life.”
In Snyder’s estimation, so much of that learning begins in the locker room, and the locker room is what he most missed when COVID-19 and social distancing changed his routine. No one is happier that life is returning to normal.
“The last year of COVID was horrible,” Snyder said. “You weren’t allowed in the locker room, and you didn’t get that connection. Fellows showed up, and then they left. We did the best we could, but it wasn’t as much fun.
“I am a locker room guy,” he continued. “I LOVE the locker room. I think the locker room is where it happens. My enjoyment is seeing guys bond with each other and getting to know them and seeing the enjoyment they have for each other and the love to be around each other. I LOVE Saturday morning practices. We come in, and we laugh, play soccer volleyball or soccer tennis. We beat Shawnee and come in the locker room, and there is a dance party. I love seeing them be rewarded for their hard work. It’s their faces, the enjoyment that they have with each other, that is the most rewarding.”
Snyder’s coaching rewards have come at a personal cost, which explains the antiacids and Imodium, the results of his admitted internalization of his own competitive nature.
“I go to the doctor for my stomach,” Snyder said. “I get myself all worked up because I put too much pressure on myself. It’s that brain-gut connection. Your mind is racing, and sometimes I don’t know how to turn it off. It can consume me. I pace. I can’t sleep. My brain gets going, and I try to hold it together. I used to think about trying to coach at the college level, and then I’m like, no way. I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle the amount of stress I would put on myself.”
Snyder is content to pour his passion into his high school athletes. His mother, he assures, would be “over the top gushing,” that he is “passionate and caring.”
“I try to be as honest as I can without hurting your feelings,” he said. “Sometimes, you have to have those tough conversations with kids – whether it’s not making the team, not getting enough playing time. If you don’t make the tough decisions, then it festers. If I’m thinking it, they are going to know it, in a kindly way.”
Because ultimately Snyder wants his student-athletes to experience what he has enjoyed 300 times over. As a junior at Pennsauken High School, his team won the South Jersey championship, advanced to the state semifinals and lost on a hand-ball goal. That game, that feeling, is always in his head and motivates him to teach his players to play the right way, to control what they can – their energy and their effort. The satisfaction is when he can take 20 kids and have them working for each other, “pulling on the same rope.”
Winning a state championship, or three, isn’t half bad.
“I have been so fortunate to have the great support of families through the years,” he said. “Each state championship was different, but awesome in its own right – the ultimate! But going through seasons – even when you don’t win the ultimate prize – against awesome competition, building friendships through the sport – it makes you better.”
And here come the tears.
“When I think of those rewarding moments, I think of the movie Miracle when Herb Brooks goes into the tunnel and raises his arms and celebrates by himself,” Snyder says with a crack in his voice, imitating the gesture. “I can’t watch that part without crying, because internally it is everything he wanted to do as a coach, and he let his emotions out. That’s the way I felt after we won a state championship, and it doesn’t get old.”
The 2021 Minutemen celebrated alongside their coach, Shane Snyder, on October 12, 2021, after handing him his 300th career coaching victory. The team has rattled off 11 straight wins and are now 13-2-1 on the season.
