Katie Zarrilli is the new girls’ soccer coach at Easton High School and even though tryouts are still almost three months away, she is excited to get going.
“I am absolutely thrilled to take on this position,” Zarrilli said in an e-mail. “When a few folks from Easton contacted me last year to see if I’d be interested, I was through the roof with excitement and from then on had my heart set on being head coach.
“Soccer has always been a huge passion of mine, and the tight-knit community of Easton seems like the perfect fit. I’m counting down until the season starts,” she added.
The school’s athletic director, Steve Shaw, said Zarrilli is a welcome addition to the coaching staff.
“She has a great soccer background, is a hard worker, has a great deal of energy and she will be a great role model for the student athletes,” Shaw said.
Zarrilli is a reporter at WAGM-TV in Presque Isle. She played soccer at the high school level at Gorham, a team that won four state titles, and went on to play collegiately at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.
She was an assistant girls’ coach at Fort Fairfield last year under then head coach Jocelyn MacDonald.
“I’m looking to bring enthusiasm and a deep love for the beautiful game,” Zarrilli said. “I hope to get the girls as excited about soccer as I am, and take their skills to a new level.”
She plans to focus on the fundamentals and “I’ll emphasize heavily that we’re a unit and will work with the girls so that they’re able to trust and rely on each other,” she added.
Zarrilli replaces Audra Fitzherbert, who coached the team the past three seasons and recently accepted a teaching position in Caribou. Shaw said Fitzherbert did “an outstanding job” with the program.
Her 2016 team put together a seven-game winning streak late in the season and garnered the seventh seed in the Class D North playoffs. The Bears beat Schenck in the prelim round before losing by a narrow 3-2 margin to No. 2 Penobscot Valley in the quarters.
“She had teams that were competitive and that worked hard, and she was a very positive and knowledgeable coach,” Shaw said. “She took eighth-graders on her team to have enough players and still made the playoffs, and her ability to bring the best out of her players was second to none.”
