A Heart for the Sport: Coach Michael Ameruoso of Soccer Stars

A camp counselor or class teacher who truly cares about their students can do wonders for an adolescent’s development. At Soccer Stars, a nationwide children’s soccer program, a role model in this regard is Master Head Coach Michael Ameruoso.

Growing up in Italy, Ameruoso says that soccer is basically part of the culture. He could be found playing it in the streets with his friends, and at age 12 he played for the town youth team. When his family moved to the United Stated in the mid-1980s, he put a pause on soccer and joined the family’s textile business — first working in home furnishings for his parents then at his uncle’s fabric company.

Coach Michael Ameruoso Talks Soccer Stars

“I stopped playing soccer for basically 10 years in this country because I couldn’t find a place to play,” he says. “I thought soccer was not popular in this country.” The thing to reignite his passion for the game was the founding of Major League Soccer in 1993, which inspired him to seek out pickup games in Manhattan.

Spending the summer of 2003 in the Hamptons, Ameruoso’s then-girlfriend responded to a help wanted ad in a local paper on his behalf. When he answered his phone early one morning, he was surprised to find a representative of Soccer Stars on the other end offering him an assistant-teaching trial run in East Hampton. He had some physical therapy coaching experience at this point but had never coached kids. He accepted the unexpected opportunity anyway.

“That was the first class that I did. It just — I don’t know — it just hit me, and I loved it,” he says. Starting as a third assistant, Ameruoso says the pressure was low, allowing himself to ease into the unique skill of coaching children. After a job well done, he was invited to join Soccer Stars, and he’s since worked there full-time for about 20 years now.

Coaching kids, Ameruoso explains, gave him a new perspective on the sport that he’d loved since childhood. “I always thought I knew the sport. I was a natural and had played it for many years, but dealing with young kids, you have to break down the skills, first of all,” he says. “I fell in love with the sport in a childish way … because Soccer Stars focuses a lot, especially with the young children, on fun, teamwork and, obviously, learning to play soccer.”

One aspect that helped him better connect with the kids in his classes was the low student-coach ratio that allowed more personal attention to be given to each child. “You have all kinds of different kids — athletic kids who are hyper, kids who are sometimes don’t want to move physically so you have to inspire them — so we have techniques and constantly do trainings to evolve our knowledge in dealing with different kind of kids,” he says.

9“For some reason, I had this natural ability to inspire children at a young age. This is nothing that I learned, I just naturally had this connection with kids in the sense that I’m able to understand them not like a coach, but like a human being,” Ameruoso says, noting that this natural talent plus license programs that teach coaches about the psychology of children have allowed him to thrive as a mentor.

” I have the same passion that I used to have — maybe because I’m getting older (53), my energy’s a little bit lower, but my passion is there. My love for the sport is there, my love for the job is there,” he notes. “So even though it’s been 20 years, I’m still looking forward to go to work every single day.”

Ameruoso will kick off the 2023 summer season with two-day Memorial Day weekend camps for ages 3–4, 5–7 and 8–11 at Mashashimuet Park in Sag Harbor. Super Soccer Stars classes will continue at the park all summer, with season and monthly enrollment available. Ameruoso also teaches private lessons.

Visit soccerstars.com for more info.