George Tarantini was a Wolfpack soccer legend
George Tarantini, the longest-serving and winningest coach in NC State men’s soccer history, died at his home in Raleigh on Wednesday at the age of 70.
A fan and player favorite, Tarantini roamed the sidelines for 25 years as head coach of the Wolfpack and four years as an assistant, his fabulous long hair trailing in the breeze and his thick, incomprehensible accent echoing across the field.
He was rowdy, loud and lovable, creating teams that matched his personality.
“Sometimes, my passion overcomes my reason,” Tarantini said when he retired in 2010.
Tarantini believed that soccer deserved to be exciting, the way it was when he and brother Alberto Tarantini were growing up in Argentina. Both played for high-level junior teams, and Alberto was a member of the Argentinian national team that won the 1978 World Cup. He always believed in an attacking, high-scoring approach to the game.
“I don’t think it could be played any other way,” he said.
Tarantini was a perfect fit to be a charter member of the NC State Athletics Rat Pack, which had only one membership requirement: a last name ending in a vowel. It included men’s basketball coach (and eventually athletics director) Jim Valvano, wrestling coach Bob Guzzo and baseball coach Sam Esposito. You can imagine how entertaining the official minutes of that club would be, had anybody bothered to take them.
They rode each other hard. Valvano always called the Italian-born and Argentinian-raised Tarantini “the department’s favorite illegal alien.” He mercilessly heckled Tarantini’s broken English accent, which never much improved after 40 years as a U.S. citizen. They laughed hard and played even harder.
It was the thing Tarantini cherished most about his time with the Wolfpack: the stories of those days in the offices and hallways of the Case Athletics Center and the Weisiger-Brown Building. And the back booths of Amedeo’s, where the Rat Pack often retreated to for a little more laughter at the end of the day.
And it was the thing he protected the most. Once asked if he would share his favorite Valvano memories for posterity, Tarantini politely but firmly declined.
“I had the opportunity to share a few moments with Coach Valvano,” Tarantini said. “Those are very personal and private memories for me, and that’s the way I want to keep them.”
Tarantini came to NC State in 1982 from Poughkeepsie, New York’s Dutchess Community College as an assistant soccer coach for head coach Larry Gross, after Gross noticed his work as an assistant on a junior national team. They worked together with the men’s program and Gross started the women’s program in 1984, coaching both teams. One of Valvano’s first moves as athletics director was elevating Tarantini to head coach for the men in 1986 and making Gross both the women’s coach and coordinator of the soccer programs.
The mid-80s were golden years with players like Chris Ogu, Sam Okpodu, Sadri Gjonbalaj, Chibuzor Ehilegbu, Chris Peat and the incomparable Tab Ramos, who was a junior when Tarantini took over the team.
The program flourished under Tarantini, winning games at an unprecedented fashion and sending players to the World Cup, the Olympics, the National Soccer Hall of Fame and the White House.
Tarantini continued to recruit talent from all over the world, but was also the first coach to harvest local talent from the Capital Area Soccer League that flourished in the Triangle from 1980 onward.
“He really embraced local talent unlike any other coach in the area,” says Raleigh native and Ravenscroft High product Curt Johnson, the president of the North Carolina Football Club and the North Carolina Courage. “He recognized that he could compete with players from the Triangle, as well as those he recruited nationally and internationally.
“It created the most diverse group of people I have ever been around. The most impactful thing about being part of his program was the opportunity to talk with people from different countries, different politics, different areas of the country, all brought together by George to represent NC State.”
Ramos, a native of Uraguay who came to NC State via New Jersey, became one of the most decorated players in U.S. soccer history and is currently the head coach of the U.S. National U-20 Team. Others such as Henry Gutierrez, Athens Drive High School product Roy Lassiter, Dario Brose and Pablo Mastroeni became stars of the game.
Backup goalie Bob Gibbs from Auburn, Alabama, went on to be the White House Communications Director under President Barack Obama and is now the head of corporate communications for McDonalds.
“I am enormously grateful to Coach Tarantini for taking a chance on me and giving me a chance to play in college,” Gibbs said in a 2010 interview in his White House office. “I look back and wonder how differently I would view those four years of college if I hadn’t been involved with something like the soccer team.
“Those are memories you never forget.”
Gibbs was a sophomore reserve on the 1990 team that reached the program’s pinnacle of success, winning the school’s only ACC title with an undefeated league record and advancing to the College Cup, soccer’s version of the Final Four.
Led by two-time ACC Player of the Year Gutierrez and three-time All-American and future Olympian Brose, the Wolfpack advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championship for the first and only time in school history. The Wolfpack won the ACC Tournament with wins over Maryland, Clemson and Virginia and advanced to the NCAA semifinals with a win over South Carolina and on penalty kicks over Virginia.
The Pack played UCLA to a scoreless tie for the right to go to the championship game, but lost on penalty kicks to the eventual national champion Bruins.
“Anyone could have coached that team, with all the talent we had,” Tarantini said.
In all, Tarantini posted a 221-190-41 record in his 25 years as head coach, taking his team to the NCAA tournament nine times. Tarantini coached seven of NC State’s nine representatives on the ACC’s top 50 players, when the league announced its golden anniversary team in 2003.
Tarantini sent Ramos, Gutierrez, Brose, Mastroeni and Scott Schweitzer to the U.S. National Team. He produced 12 All-Americans and four ACC Players of the Year. He was twice named ACC Coach of the Year, in 1992 and ’94, and was the NCAA Regional Coach of the Year.
More than anything, Tarantini loved his players.
“Someone told me I don’t love the game, I love the people involved in the game,” Tarantini said at the time of his retirement. “I think that is true. My team has always been my security blanket, one I can hide behind. The kids make me excited about getting up every morning.
“And I’ll never apologize for being a coach. Sports can be such a great part of someone’s life and I have 27 lives to deal with every day, which is very important to me.”
In retirement, Tarantini remained in Raleigh. He married Wolfpack women’s golf coach Page Marsh and they spent time traveling the world to work with young athletes. He was a co-founder and director of Raleigh Futbol 4 All, a youth organization that gave Hispanic children in the Triangle the opportunity to play youth soccer for free, to learn about the game, to learn about the importance of community service and to appreciate the importance of education.
“George was a champion of the underdog,” Johnson says. “He was most interested in players who might have had some challenges, maybe didn’t have the best fields to play on or have the strongest coaches. That didn’t matter to him.
“He just enjoyed being around young kids and teaching them to love the game. That’s who he was.”
For Tarantini, his retirement goal was simple.
“I hope to give back for the many things I have received,” he said.
And he did.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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