It’s 5:15 a.m. on a Monday. Do you know where your soccer coach is?
At that hour, every Monday through Friday, Rich Savage is on a channel of Long Island Sound, typically in a single scull, rowing — in the dark — with the masters team at RowAmerica Rye.
“Rowing is my quiet time,” said Savage, whose Rye High School girls soccer teams have made plenty of noise in his 35 years as head coach. “It keeps me out of trouble and forces me to be disciplined. Around here, everybody knows the high school kids are the real stars of the club. I just love the sport and the workout.”
By 7:45 a.m., he reports for duty as a fifth-grade teacher at Osborn School in Rye, just as he’s done on nearly every school day for the last 26 years.
“I started out in finance and marketing and had a few jobs that didn’t quite pan out,” Savage said. “My first teaching job was at Iona Grammar School in New Rochelle. My days were crazy there. I did and taught anything they asked of me. But I began to learn how to teach. And more importantly, that I loved it.”
Savage plans his school days and weeks during breaks and at lunch, whenever he has a spare minute. After school, there may be a faculty meeting or tutoring. Then he’s off to soccer practice, a film session with assistant coach Amanda Yannett and his players, or one of the team’s 15-plus games a year, whether it’s at home or on the road, early in the afternoon or late into the evening.
His weekdays are like a rowing stroke itself: the catch, the drive, the finish, and the recovery. Repetitive, calm, precise, and powerful.
By 6:30 a.m. on every fall Saturday, Savage is at Rye Rec setting up for a day of Rye Youth Soccer (RYS), the town’s vibrant coed youth soccer program he runs with his good friend, Rye High School boys coach Jared Small.
On Sundays — Savage’s day of rest — he coaches a RYS U-9 girls travel team.
“I call it my busy time,” Savage said of the fall.
If anything, he may need an alarm to remind him to go to bed.
How Did We Get Here?
In the late 1980s, Savage was studying finance, marketing, and computer science at Iona College (now University), where he played soccer for the legendary Lou Gallo, who also coached Savage at Rye High School.
“Lou was tough, but he was fair,” Savage said. “I loved playing for him.”
A soccer injury forced Savage to the sidelines earlier than he had expected, right around the time the girls varsity coaching job opened at Rye High School.
Was he nervous to make his homecoming as a head coach, not long after graduating from the school?
“Oh definitely!” Savage said. “I was still in school, and I was only a few years older than the girls on the team. It was tough telling them, ‘Look, I know I’m roughly the same age as you, but I’m the coach of this team now, so let’s get to work.’ And we did.”
Thirty-five years, eight section titles, and two state championships later, Savage still roams those same sidelines leading the Section 1 powerhouse Rye Garnets girls soccer team. But as of this fall, he’s no longer just a coach — he’s a Hall of Fame coach.
On Sept. 6, Savage was inducted into the New York State High School Girls Soccer Hall of Fame, joining all-time greats like former U.S. National Team members Crystal Alyssia (Dunn) Soubrier, from South Side High School in Rockville Centre, and Abby Wambach, from Our Lady of Mercy High School in Rochester.
“I’m not so comfortable with all the attention recently, but the Hall of Fame induction is certainly an honor,” he said. “And it’s one that I share with the entire soccer community of Rye. So many incredible families, parents, and supporters over the years have been so good to me and our RHS teams. And they’ve all been so supportive of the sport of soccer.”
Breaking New Ground
In Savage’s three-plus decades leading the Garnets, the game’s popularity has grown nationally and globally, but also at the local level.
“Just look at the new Nursery Field,” Savage said of the renovated artificial turf facility that teams began using this year. “I still can’t believe it’s real. I really feel like I was lucky to be born in the old United Hospital next door in Port Chester, and lucky to have been raised in Rye. It still is and always will be our home.”
The current state of Rye soccer is a far cry from what Savage walked into in the 1980s. Back then, girls soccer had just been added as a new sport in New York high school athletics, and neither the boys or girls teams were allowed to set foot on the Rye High School football field.
“It was tough in the early going,” Savage said. “At the time, as a Section 1 school, we were forced to play girls soccer in the spring. The rest of the state played in the fall and that’s when the playoffs were, that’s when the state tournament took place. But we weren’t allowed to participate.”
Savage’s 2004 team was led by Greer Barnes, one of the all-time Rye greats, who went on to play college soccer at West Virginia University. Rye finished 20-0-0 that season, but because the team played in the spring, they weren’t able to play in the postseason.
“After we won our first state title in 2008, our 2010 team was ranked the No. 1 girls high school team in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks,” Savage said. “Those were good teams. It took a class-action lawsuit in Section 1 to change the season scheduling for good. Girls soccer was really starting to take off and it was a big deal.”
The legal ruling may have been a watershed moment in girls high school soccer in New York, but for Savage it was hardly as significant as the evening in 1991 when he met his bride-to-be at a local establishment called The Mug & Ale, better known by its current name, Rye Grill & Bar.
“Marjut — who goes by ‘Maiju,’ because it’s only slightly easier to pronounce — was visiting Rye from Finland,” Savage said. “It was her second or third day in town. We met at a party and became good friends. I thought she was absolutely lovely that first night. Maiju made it extremely clear to me from the moment we met that she was just visiting Rye, just passing through, and that she was not interested in a relationship. We were married two years later. She’s been passing through Rye for the past 34 years, and she’s still my best friend.”
Maiju (pronounced “MY-you”) and Rich have two boys, both graduates of Rye High School. Richard Jr. (much easier to pronounce) is a graduate of Curry College — where he played soccer — and is a fourth-grade teacher in Hanover, Mass. Younger son Sean just graduated from Springfield College and is pursuing a career in medicine.
Coach Savage: The Truth
There is a subtle shyness to Savage, an attribute shared by many great teachers and coaches. It’s one of the reasons so many folks in Rye and beyond pull for his Garnet teams year after year.
He’s never timid in front of his students or while coaching, when his trademark whistle is hanging around his neck. But ask him about any success achieved in the classroom or on the pitch and he’ll tell you all of it is due to the hard work — the teamwork — put in by the kids.
“I’m still learning from kids, from other coaches, about soccer, and about myself,” Savage said. “As a coach, I make mistakes all the time. They sting for sure, but mistakes are actually good. They make us stronger. It’s how we grow as human beings.”
When Savage was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Niskayuna, his family was in attendance, along with a large showing of current and former players and coaches, plus Rye High School colleagues like Small and athletic director Susan Reid Dullea.
“It’s easy to celebrate Rich Savage,” Reid Dullea said. “The man has dedicated his life to shaping not only generations of talented athletes, but remarkable young women in Rye. His passion and commitment have left a lasting legacy on our soccer program and our community. Rich’s induction into the New York High School Hall of Fame is a well-deserved recognition of a career defined by impact, leadership, and heart.”
Savage may be a Hall of Famer now, but he’d be the last one to ask people to use that moniker. After all these years, his players still refer to him on a one-name basis: “Savage.”
“Over the years, the plaques, the banners in the gym, even the gold or silver on the trophies all start to fade,” he said. “What will never fade for me are the memories of what all those great kids accomplished on the field as teams. I can’t tell you how many of my former players have gone on to do the most interesting things with their lives. Many of them still keep in touch, they still follow our team, and for that, I’ll always be grateful. For most of those girls, I’ll never know if our last season together was their favorite season, but I sure hope it was.”
