St. Paul’s boys’ soccer is ready for season with new head coach

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent

WORCESTER - It’s easy to spot the new St. Paul Diocesan Jr./Sr. High School boys’ soccer coach during games.

He’s the one wearing a cassock.

Father Michael D. Hoye coached his first game as the new St. Paul boys’ soccer coach in a 3-2 loss at Main South on Thursday, Sept. 4. Just a couple weeks earlier, he became pastor of St. Mark Parish in Sutton, the parish in which he grew up.

After being ordained in June of 2022, Father Hoye served as associate pastor of St. Mary Parish in Uxbridge. Last July, he continued in that role, but he also became associate pastor of St. Mark’s. A couple of months later, Bishop McManus appointed him pastor.

“It’s very humbling because you expect to be sent off into the world,” he said, “but there’s a passage in one of the Gospel stories where there is a man healed by Jesus and the man desires to follow him wherever he goes and the Lord says, ‘No, you need to go home to your family and friends and tell them what great things God has done for you.’ So that’s pretty literally my life right now.”

All in the month of August, he learned that he would not only become pastor of St. Mark’s but also head soccer coach at St. Paul’s and an adjunct professor of theology at Assumption University.

Father Hoye, 31, wears his Roman collar to all games, but not usually to practices. “First and foremost, I’m a priest. Coaching can come and go.”

One day recently, St. Paul’s athletic director, Jim Manzello, spotted Father Hoye wearing his clerical clothing at practice. The next day, Mr. Manzello was walking by and he couldn’t find the priest at first.

“He had practice clothes on and he was running with them – and he was in the lead,” Mr. Manzello said.

Father Jose F. Carvajal, St. Paul’s head of school, asked Father Hoye to coach the team and he agreed. When they were seminarians, the two lived together at the St. Mary Parish rectory in Uxbridge during the pandemic. So Father Carvajal knew that Father Hoye had played soccer at Holy Name Central Catholic Jr./Sr. High School, which merged in 2020 with St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic Jr./Sr. High School to form St. Paul’s on the former Holy Name campus.

“Surprisingly,” Father Hoye said of coaching, “it’s one of the most natural things that has happened to me or that I’ve been asked to do.”

Father Hoye said soccer was a big part of his life while he grew up, even calling it his “identity” at one point. But then he gave up soccer to run cross-country and track at Assumption University.

“I kind of forgot about soccer,” he said. “So to have my soccer life kind of be resurrected during this time of also being a priest ... it just comes back more naturally than I ever expected because all those drills when you’re little, they don’t leave you.”

Junior captain Colt Martin never had a priest coach him before this soccer season.
“It’s definitely a different experience,” the Sterling resident said, “but it’s not as different as you might think. There’s something kind of reassuring about it.”

The team prays together after practices and before games, as it did last year, but this time with a priest.

Colt has enjoyed having Father Hoye as a coach.

“He’s definitely a players’ coach,” Colt said. “He looks out for the players. He knows your name. He’s going to be the first one to ask, ‘Are you okay?’ He’s going to be the first one to show you what you’re doing [because] he knows what he’s doing.”

Junior captain Elias Peschiera urged Father Hoye to hold Mass and adoration before some of the games and he agreed.

“So to be the coach and also to be able to celebrate Mass with the team,” he said, “that’s a totally unexpected grace.”

When he doesn’t have a Mass intention as a pastor, he prays for what he calls his three flocks: His parish, his students and his players.

While he was an associate pastor at St. Mary Parish in Uxbridge, Father Hoye helped coach the cross-country team at Our Lady of the Valley Regional School, a Catholic elementary school. Serving as head coach and pastor is a lot more responsibility.

“I was an athlete my entire life,” he said. “So to be able to give all of that back at this stage of my life, this new chapter, is pretty humbling. I didn’t expect any of that.”

Father Hoye played sweeper for the Holy Name boys’ soccer team, served as captain as a junior and senior and helped the team reach the district tournament as a freshman and a senior. After not playing soccer at Assumption, he resumed playing as a seminarian in Rome from 2017-2020 and his team won the Clericus Cup championship his first year.

“It was a really intense team and I learned so much more than from my high school days,” he said. “So I remembered a lot of those drills and workouts. To be able to bring that to the local school here was an unexpected gift.”

Father Hoye keeps busy. On Wednesday, Sept. 3, he celebrated the Mass at St. Mark Parish, read Book 3 of St. Augustine’s Confessions to prepare for his theology class at Assumption, taught the class, held an office hour for his students, coached practice, and then headed back to St. Mary Parish in Uxbridge to help with adoration and confessions. For now, he still lives at St. Mary’s with Father Nicholas Desimone, St. Mary’s pastor, and Father Jonathan E. Amidon, associate pastor at St. Denis Parish in East Douglas.

Father Carvajal said Father Hoye can show his players that he’s a lot like them.
“He went here so there’s history,” Father Carvajal said. “We’re normal and yet we decide to follow our vocation, our call, and we can still be in the world doing something like this.
 
Helping us in this way is fantastic. It means a lot that he wants to give time to this place and coach the kids. He was a good player. I talked to some of the kids already and they told me that Father Hoye is a great coach. They’re loving the experience.”

Another member of the team, sophomore Luke Jankins, is a parishioner at St. Mark Parish. So Father Hoye is his coach and pastor.

“I’m going to be starting my confirmation next year,” Luke said, “so it will be great to get to know him before I start that.”

St. Paul’s has a varsity team, but no freshman or junior varsity team. The varsity is coming off a losing season and has only two seniors, but Colt is optimistic.

“I think we will definitely shock people this year,” he said.