TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. — Martin Gramatica was the kicker for the 2003 Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even though he’s been retired since 2008, he just can’t shake that competitive spirit.
WATCH: Martin Gramatica leads West Florida girls soccer to back-to-back national tournaments
Gramatica has been coaching youth soccer for 16 years. Since going full-time into coaching, he’s led a half-dozen boys youth teams to nationals, and now, he’s taking the West Florida Flames U14 girls (East Lake) to nationals for a second straight season.
Gramatica has molded his coaching style to his former Bucs coaches, but has also improved in his own right.
“If you ask my wife, I’ve calmed down a lot more,” Gramatica said. “My excuse is I went from playing to coaching right away. So I took the intensity of playing in the NFL to coaching five-year-olds. It was a little bit too much…I was more like a Jon Gruden and not a Tony Dungy on the sideline.”
No matter the style, the end result is lots of winning. The Flames finished this season 15-1-2, while outscoring opponents by 62 goals.
“Now that we have momentum going into nationals with a lot of wins, one loss, and a couple of ties, then we have momentum going into the game,” Emme Gramatica said. “We just prepared going into the game, cause last time we weren’t really expecting what type of competition we were going to see.”
The Flames finished third nationally last season. But this year, the team is in a more competitive Elite Clubs National League-Regional (ECNL-RL)
“They consider the ECNL more of a competitive league, a pathway to college,” Gramatica said.
The girls performed even better than they did a year ago while playing in a league up.
“Last year, we didn’t know what we were getting into,” Aria Planamenta said. “We didn’t know what the competition would be. Now we have an idea of what the environment is like and how to prep for the games.”
“The longer they’ve been together they care about each other,” Gramatica added. “They are all really good friends off the field, so then on the field it's hard to beat our team because of the team unity. They’re might be better teams, more technical teams, but no one is going to outwork these girls.”
The national tournament kicks off in Dallas on June 13.
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