How Nick Woodruff and Mount Saint Charles took the NEPSAC by storm

From left: Mario Harrison Jr., Ben Crowe, coach Nick Woodruff and Ryan Scholz. (Pat Donnelly/NESJ)

AROUND 10 MINUTES before two plates of club sandwiches with sides of french fries arrived at our table in a Milton, Mass., restaurant, I asked Nick Woodruff about priorities. He’s 27 now. He took a job coaching prep school soccer at 24, an age when most former college soccer stars are either still pursuing a playing career or just starting to figure out what comes next. Woodruff, instead, climbed aboard Mount Saint Charles’ inaugural voyage in the NEPSAC.

The Woonsocket, R.I., school left the Rhode Island state association ahead of the 2024 season to join the NEPSAC, one of the most prestigious prep school conferences in the country. That was no small jump, and the Mounties needed a coach to lead their boys’ soccer program into a new world. The presumption being that it would take said coach years to build a program that could seriously compete with New England’s prep powers.

“When I took the job,” Woodruff told me, “people are looking at me like, ‘What are you doing?’”

So I wanted to know his goals for the program at Mount. I asked him to rank, in order of importance, the things he wants to accomplish year-in and year-out as the school’s coach. Number one, he told me, was placing his kids in college soccer programs. He acknowledged number two is a cliché — ensuring that all of his players enjoy their time in his program. “Because that will ultimately help with number one,” he said. Third, Woodruff told me, was maintaining the “real blue-collar mentality” that he said many of his players arrive at the school with.

All three of these, particularly the first and third, are vital to understanding the mission at Mount, as Woodruff defines it.

“And then, sure, number four — we want to win,” Woodruff said.

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But the reason I sat down with Woodruff at all is because the Mounties — surely to the surprise of many — have done a lot of number four in the two seasons since joining the NEPSAC.