October 19, 2022 - Story and photos by Joshua Ross
It was an eventful evening on the turf last night for the boys soccer team. Before the match, 24 seniors and their families were honored for their high school careers. Then the boys battled it out with a tough league foe Plymouth North. The Harbormen came away with a much needed 1-0 victory to get them back on the winning track after a two game slide. To top it off, the win gave Coach Ken Carlin his 300th career win.
Maybe he likes the number 24 - the number of seniors he kept on his team and the number of years he’s been coaching. He might like the number 300 better.
“It means a lot,” Carlin said after the game. “It’s a milestone if maybe a number of years ago I said would it be good to (achieve.) I don’t think I could live long enough to do 500, but there are not that many who have done 300 in the amount of time I’ve done my 300. We have a 71% win rate over 24 years. Which is not bad.”
He has seen a lot over the past quarter of a century, but he loves what he does and credits the his players, both current and former, for his success.
“It’s been fun, it’s been exciting, it’s been heartbreaking, it’s been everything,” he goes on to say. “These are great kids. The parents have been good to me. There have been so many memorable teams in those 24 years, this is another one. I think that when we are really playing well, we are a fun team to watch, we try and make our game as similar as we can to what the professionals try to do. Sometimes we are successful and sometimes we are not.”
Milestones are not something new in Hingham Athletics. Boys lacrosse coach John Todd reached 500 career wins last year. But Athletic Director Jim Quatromoni says each achievement stands on its own.
“300 career wins is an amazing achievement for Coach Carlin,” remarks Quatromoni. “The milestone is truly a statement of his longevity and success as well as a recognition of the efforts that student athletes under his direction have dedicated to the Hingham Boys’ Soccer Program over the course of his tenure.”
How long that tenure will ultimately be? Carlin doesn’t know for sure.
“I’m having fun,” he says with a smile. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve had a couple of seasons were it wasn’t fun, but this year has been a lot of fun. When it’s fun, it’s revitalizing. These are a good group of kids. The ones who play a lot. The ones who don’t. They are all super. Big smiles, well behaved and they’re having fun. And I’m having fun. When anything you do stops being fun, you should stop doing it.”
Congrats coach. Here’s to a few more fun years.
Game Photos
