PSU Women's Soccer: Meet the assisstant coach

Patrick Michael Shaughnessy was born on April 27, 1990 in Plattsburgh, N.Y. He is a childhood education major with a minor in coaching and his favorite food is chicken wings. At the age of 22, Pat is in his fifth year at Plattsburgh State, has played baseball and soccer at Plattsburgh State (while thriving at both), maintained an awesome GPA and learned that he prefers Nike over Adidas.

Pat was the leading goal scorer in school history with 76 goals at Plattsburgh High School where he lettered in soccer as well as baseball and basketball. After high school, he moved up a level and down the street to Plattsburgh State where he played forward for the Cardinals and after four years ended his soccer career with 42 goals and 98 points. He received fall All-SUNYAC Academic honors multiple times, was named to the Commissioner’s List and named to the All-SUNYAC Second Team. So basically he’s alright at soccer and a good role model and we’re lucky to have him yeah yeah we know.

For baseball, Pat played second base and led the Cardinals with 21 runs batted in, was second among regular players with a .312 batting average and scored a team-high 26 runs his junior year. He was also named to the All-SUNYAC First Team, but this is a soccer blog so let’s stick with what we know.

Pat has been a great fit to the women’s soccer program and we really enjoy having him around. Pat redid our whole practice and pregame warm up, gives great advice and is really good at carrying the jerseys out for us before the game. He is positive, always friendly, has a great attitude and I speak for myself as well as the rest of the girls when I say we really like having him on the field with us. He stays after practice to help us work on stuff, he is a great listener and he is an alright ref when we scrimmage during practice.

Now, this wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t add something odd, so here it is. Pat is a Taurus and Wiley is a Sagittarius, so if you know anything about astrology you know that these are two very different personalities who are trying to work together. “Taurus are quiet and patient people while Sagittarians are loud and head strong. The professional compatibility of Taurus and Sagittarius is going to be promising. The relaxed and restless nature of Taurus will find right compliment in excitement of Sagittarius. In spite of radically different temperaments and approaches, Taurus and Sagittarius will learn to appreciate the benefits of their mutual efforts and work hard to bring stability to their work.” It also goes on to say both should avoid irking each other, but honestly you should avoid irking Wiley regardless of your sign. I’d say this looks like a promising relationship and so far we have no complaints. (All this information is brought to you by my good friends at mywebastrologer.com.)

· What are your goals for the season?

I would like to win SUNYAC's and make a run into NCAA's.

· How do you feel about Buddha?

Buddha is the man.

· What is something that has surprised you so far?

How much the team hangs out and how all the girls seem to get along all of the time. That’s not the case with the guys’ team.

· What is your favorite Gatorade flavor?

Yellow all the way.

· Describe your coaching style in one word.

Fun.

· What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

Don't let anyone tell you what you can do.

· What do you want to take away from this experience?

I want to just become a better coach, see what works and what doesn't work. I want to take away some ideas for the future and hopefully coach my own team one day.