Covering Ohio soccer from the ground up.

Founder

Nic is a lifelong Stark County resident, born and raised in Canton, and soccer has run through just about every chapter of his life here. He played at GlenOak before transferring to St. Thomas Aquinas, where he helped lead the Knights to multiple district championships and the program's best-ever state ranking, No. 2 in 2007. From there he played central midfield at Malone University, then moved straight into coaching. Over the years that has meant boys' and girls' high school programs at St. Thomas Aquinas and Green, national championship teams with Cleveland United Soccer Club (now Force), an assistant role with the women's program at NCAA Division II Walsh University, and most recently a spot on the GlenOak boys' staff for the season the Golden Eagles won the program's first outright Federal League title.

Almost twenty years in, he knows the coaches, the players, the athletic directors, and the parents in the stands — because he's been all of those things.

Why He Founded Ohio Soccer Network

Stark County produces real talent and real moments every fall, and the coverage has never matched. Box scores in the paper, maybe a photo, and then it's gone. Nic started Ohio Soccer Collective and the Spotlight newsletters so that a kid's hat trick, a senior's last home game, or a coach's breakthrough season gets told by someone who understands what it means.

It matters more now than it used to. High school programs are competing with academy soccer for their own best players, and plenty of kids are skipping the high school experience entirely. Nic's answer is not to argue with them — it's to show what they'd be missing. Some of the best memories of his life happened on a high school pitch, first as a player and then as a coach, and this publication is his way of making sure those moments get the audience they deserve.

How we cover it

We amplify good news. We'll have opinions — power rankings, players of the week, game picks — and we'll stand behind them, but we will never chase clicks by tearing down a teenager or a coach. If a story wouldn't make a parent proud to forward it to a grandparent, we don't run it.

“With community, give before you get”

As a former small business owner, Nic watched local businesses buy banners at the ballfield with no way to know what the support actually did. Ohio Soccer Collective was built differently from day one: Every sponsorship results in a percentage of that revenue going back to Federal League booster clubs, and every dollar is tracked. Sponsors get a real audience. Programs get real money. The community gets coverage that costs the reader nothing.

What long term vision

Stark County is where this starts, not where it ends. The long-term vision is a network of county-level publications across Ohio, each run by someone rooted in that community the way Nic is rooted in this one. An advisory board of business and soccer leaders helps keep the whole thing honest.

Nic lives in Plain Township with his wife Nikki and their three kids — Lucas (5), Elia (3), and Sienna (1).