Lin Hurley of Delray Beach reacts after a player scores a goal. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Steve Plunkett
To say it’s been a banner year for longtime special-needs soccer coach Lin Hurley would be a huge understatement.
First, she was declared coach of the year for the Soccer Association of Boca Raton’s TOPSoccer program, an outreach program for special-needs children that she has been a part of since it started in 2000.
In August she was recognized as the Florida Youth Soccer Association’s TOPSoccer coach of the year, and in November with the same honor for the 11-state South Region of U.S. Youth Soccer. Two months later she traveled to Philadelphia to accept accolades as the national TOPSoccer coach of the year.
“This whole thing has been like a dream, it really has. I just love what I do, and I’ve done it so long, I never expected anything like this to happen,” Hurley said as Boca Raton’s 2023 season drew to a close in March. “This has made me feel like a rock star.”
Vic Nocera, who directs the TOPSoccer program, said Hurley’s national recognition was “like an Academy Award.”
“It’s all made out of glass. Probably weighs about 50 pounds,” he said of her trophy.
Hurley’s motivation is simple.
“I love the children, I love seeing the joy that they have when they come here, the smile on their faces,” she said.
As a sophomore at Boca Raton High School in 1966 she “adopted” a special-needs girl who was institutionalized in Miami, driving there every month with fellow high schoolers to hold a party “just for something for them to experience.”
“That’s how I started. I just fell in love with these children and I just knew that this was what God planned for me.”
After that came a degree in special education from the University of South Florida, four years of teaching at J.C. Mitchell Elementary, a break to raise her four children, then 25 years teaching pre-K at St. Paul Lutheran, Advent Lutheran and Spanish River Christian schools, all in Boca Raton.
She also launched an after-school program for special-needs kids at the Boca YMCA.
At a Valentine’s Day program at Spanish River, the headmaster told students about kindness.
“He said, ‘When I think of kindness, I think of Lin Hurley,’” she said.
Since 2000, the year the program began, Hurley has spent Saturday afternoons from January to March at Boca Raton’s University Woodlands Park coaching kids 4 to 7 years old. Her co-coaches are Suzie Wrenne, who joined in 2004, and Genie Butrym, since 2006.
The Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District presented Hurley, 71, with a proclamation March 6 noting its “profound appreciation for her dedication to our community.”
“I’ve never seen a lady with more energy. I’ve never seen her without a smile on her face. I’ve never seen her not being willing to help any of our parts of our soccer program,” said district Vice Chair Bob Rollins, who is also the treasurer of SABR.
“There’s some really nice people in this world still, aren’t there — like truly, just really, honestly nice people,” district Chair Erin Wright said.
Each TOPSoccer athlete gets an official soccer shirt and has one or two “buddies” from middle or high school to help out depending on the athlete’s abilities. Buddies earn community service hours and program awards based on their contributions. The program is free to participants, who numbered about 145 this year.
“I love seeing the joy they have when they come here,” says Hurley, who moved from Boca Raton to Delray Beach in 2015.
A typical Saturday starts with a group run followed by obstacle courses and a modified game. When players kick the ball into the goal, she immediately blows her coach’s whistle and shouts “Woo-hoo,” “Yay!” “Good job,” and “Gimme five.”
“We’re basically cheerleaders,” she says.
On March 11 she and 6-year-old Ethan Robinson walked hand in hand toward a soccer field for the warm-up run.
At 4-feet-11, Hurley didn’t have to reach far to hold onto the young player’s hand.
Her husband, Pat, who was on the Ziff estate’s management team in Manalapan, towers over her at 6-foot-3 but has this to say about the size difference:
“She’s considerably smaller than me, but she has more love in her little finger than I have in my whole body.”
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