ENYYSA honors longtime RVC soccer coach Bralower

Legendary Rockville Centre soccer coach Peter Bralower was honored by the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association on May 11 as its Personality of the Month of May.

Bralower has coached soccer for 45 years at both the local and high school levels and guided several of his teams to championships. The Rockville Centre Royals women’s club won eight straight Long Island Junior Soccer League titles from 2008-15, while the men’s team claimed three Long Island Soccer Football League summer championships while retiring the Paul Voss Cup in the process.

He became the girls’ varsity soccer coach of Sacred Heart Academy in 2008 and won his first state championship last year with a young lineup that included seven sophomores. He was named Co-Coach of the Year by Newsday in 2016.

“I would like to add that I’m also very proud of having coached in the select programs of the Cosmopolitan Junior Soccer League as well as both the boys and girls select in the LIJSL,” he said.

Bralower began playing soccer when he was 12 and he was a part of the first stage of the youth soccer boom during the 60’s. He began coaching in the Rockville Centre Soccer Club’s initial intramural program in 1972, when he was still in high school.

The Rockville Centre Soccer Club dedicated the south field at the Dean Skelos Sports Complex in honor of Bralower, one of the club’s original volunteers and a former president for 10 years. He initiated the “Kids Teaching Kids” program, in which the older players teach the younger players soccer skills and tactics for no charge, and was also influential in bringing the TOPS soccer program to the club for children with special needs.

When he is not coaching, Bralower can be found in the classroom as a special education and history teacher at Forest Hills High School in Queens.