Welcome Emily Scheese, GLG’s New Technical Director!
We are thrilled to have Emily Scheese join the GLG team. As Technical Director, she will play a crucial role in shaping the soccer development journey for players and coaches. Emily will provide mentorship, training, and strategic development to staff, coaches and players, ensuring that they are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to excel on and off the field.
Emily holds her US Soccer Coaching C License, is the head coach of the Cal State Maritime Academy Women's Soccer Team. In the past, she's been the Head Coach of three NPL 2003-2205 girls teams for Almaden FC, she was the Technical Trainer for the Aptos Tide Soccer Club, Camp Director for the Nike US Soccer Camps, played college soccer at UC San Diego, and was named Most Valuable Defensive Player in her earlier playing years.
Meet Emily Scheese
While starting her youth sport’s career as a competitive gymnast, Emily began her soccer career in middle school on her local AYSO team in Torrance, CA. She began her club playing career with Ajax in the South Bay LA area.
Emily attended Bishop Montgomery High School and led the girls' soccer team to a CIF championship in 1994. Two years later, she earned Most Valuable Defensive Player and All-Del Rey League First Team honors as a senior.
By junior and senior year of high school, she played for the Palos Verdes Breakers. She cites her time with her team at the Norway and Dana Cups as transformational in inspiring her to continue her soccer career.
Emily continued her collegiate athletic and academic career at UC San Diego, walking on to the women’s team in 1996, into what was already an NCAA DIII powerhouse. On the field, she was part of the Triton’s three NCAA national championship titles in 1996, 1997, and 1999 with a combined record of 72-7-3 throughout her college career, playing as an outside left back and sometimes wing. In addition to earning a degree in literature and minoring in critical gender studies at UCSD, she received a departmental award for the best senior honors thesis in 2000.
While in graduate school at UC Santa Cruz, she earned a Ph.D. in literature, with an emphasis in feminist studies in 2012, and taught several postcolonial literature, women's Caribbean literature, feminist theory, rhetoric and composition courses for its literature and writing departments. She also taught several summer courses for the Institute of Reading Development, a program that focuses on reading and study enrichment skills in the K-12 arena.
During graduate school at UCSC, Emily also became involved and inspired by coaching in her local community, both at the collegiate level as an assistant coach at UCSC, and as a club coach, technical trainer and advisor for the Aptos Tide Soccer Club.
After serving as an assistant for two years, Emily became head coach of UCSC in 2012, and her team won the Great South Athletic Conference in 2015 and advanced to the NCAA Division III National Championship Tournament six times during her tenure, earning her Division III Associate of Independents Coach of the Year accolades in 2013, 2014 and 2016. Emily’s teams were just as successful in the classroom at UC Santa Cruz which earned the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s Team Scholar Award with a cumulative GPA of 3.35—the highest within the UC system from 2012-16.
In 2017, Emily took on the challenge of launching the women’s soccer program at CSU Maritime Academy in Vallejo, CA. In her final season as head coach, the program continued its growth and development in the classroom and on the soccer field. In addition to Maddy Dack and Kate Dabrow earning All-Cal Pac Second Team and Honorable Mention, the Keelhaulers earned NAIA Daktronics All-Scholar, United Soccer Coaches Team Scholar and Team Ethics and Sportsmanship honors. While on campus as Cal Maritime, Emily also served in the role as faculty liaison for the athletics department and developed several Faculty Learning Modules as well as helped to facilitate the campus’ leadership development program designed by the Center for Creative Leadership. She has been a champion of gender equity causes on the campus.
Emily served as Nike Soccer’s US Sports Camps’ summer camp director in 2023 and from 2012-17. In addition to her commitments at UC Santa Cruz and Cal Maritime, Emily also spent additional time developing youth soccer in San Jose by working with Global Premier Soccer CA’s 03 regional team and Almaden FC’s 03 NPL and 04-5 Green teams for six years, from 2017-22. During the collegiate offseason, Emily served as assistant coach to the Women’s Premier Soccer League’s Napa Valley 1839, focusing her efforts on skill development and tactical awareness for post-intercollegiate, Division I, II, III, NAIA and youth athletes.
In addition to her USSF C Coaching License, while at Cal Maritime she received an invitation from the NAIA & Cal Pac Conference to attend its Rise Leadership Event, a group that focuses its efforts on creating and strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for implementation by its membership. Emily also took full advantage of a leadership development opportunity from the NCAA, designed to strengthen coaches’ leadership skills for respective programs, as a member of the Women Coaches Academy’s 51st cohort, a program intended to mentor female coaches and carve out pathways for uplifting and supporting women in the coaching profession.
