The Elyria High School Girls Soccer program has a new head coach: Alyssa Church.
Church is a teacher at Northwood Middle School and a seasoned soccer coach.
Assisting Alyssa in this top spot is another coaching dynamo, Todd Church.
Todd—also a middle school teacher at Westwood Middle—is Alyssa’s father. Todd has been a constant in Alyssa’s soccer career from childhood to college.
“My first experience with soccer was here in Elyria. My dad coached my GESA travel team and he pretty much coached me my entire career, even club and high school,” Alyssa said. “It’s cool coming back to the city where it all started.”
Alyssa is a graduate of Strongsville High School where she played soccer for four years. She continued her soccer career in college at Ohio Northern University.
Before coming to Elyria, Alyssa assisted coaching in Strongsville in 2018-2019. The Strongsville team made the state finals that year.
Alyssa came to Northwood Middle School in the 2020-2021 school year, and she joined Elyria’s soccer staff as an assistant coach.
“I’m so excited to keep building on the connections that I made last year,” she said. “Being in the middle schools I see the girls that are coming up and I know our players currently are excited about the players coming in, as are we as a coaching staff.
“Anything to grow on what we did last season,” said Alyssa. “They are a fun group of girls; great to talk to, the best culture of a team that I’ve been a part of so far.”
Todd is an Elyria High graduate who began his teaching career with Elyria Schools in 2005. Todd has assisted coaching the Elyria Pioneers Boys Soccer Team and served as head coach of the program for one year.
The majority of Todd’s coaching was in Strongsville where he spent 17 seasons as the head coach of the Strongsville Girls Soccer team. With Todd at the helm, the team earned three state titles and three state runner-ups.
Church conducted a skills camp this month for students in grades four and up to introduce them to the sport. You can watch the video on Elyria Schools Pioneer TV YouTube.