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Business school wasn’t in the cards for Peter Newman ’73.
His standardized test scores were never sent to the schools where he hoped to get a MBA. The day he found out about the error, Newman got a call from Nazareth (Pa.) Area High School offering him a job teaching English.
Newman was an English major and did student teach at the high school, but education wasn’t his path — or so he thought.
“I was a student teacher in the fall of my senior year because I had the credits and my adviser thought I would have a good time,” he says. But in the spring the English teacher he had worked with retired. Newman thought he would teach for a year and reapply to business school in the spring.
That was 33 years ago. Newman has taught at Nazareth since then, serving as department chair for 18 years before stepping down two years ago. Since 2001 he’s also been head coach of the boys soccer team.
“I had coached a little for my son’s teams in elementary and junior high school,” he says. “I think they (Nazareth administrators) were looking for someone who had a little more teaching experience and knew how to deal with students and parents.”
Newman had his coaching certificate, was hired, and immediately sought an assistant coach.
Conor Fry is in his 20s and “can play soccer and run — the things I can’t do,” Newman says with a laugh.
The following spring, the coaching job for the girls soccer team opened up and Fry asked Newman to apply.
“I told him I didn’t want to be the head coach for two teams, so he got the job,” Newman says. “Then he asked me to be assistant coach.”
So it goes every year, Newman is boys head coach in the fall and Fry is his assistant. In the spring, the roles reverse for the girls team. Both teams have third coaches as well.
Newman was honored as Coach of the Year by The Express-Times (Easton, Pa.) for last season and won the school’s division for the second consecutive year. The team also won in 2003.
“We built up a pretty good program,” he says. “The feeder programs and club teams are improving, but the combination of coaching has really worked well.”