Glenn Crooks Reflects on Half-Century in the Soccer Coaching, Broadcasting Industries
The legendary Italian soccer coach Arrigo Sacchi once said, “You don’t have to have been a horse to be a jockey.” This aphorism could just as well be used to describe the life and legacy of Glenn Crooks; after all, Glenn never played soccer professionally, but he’s nevertheless etched out a permanent legacy thanks to his work in the coaching and broadcasting industries.
Honing his Skills in New Jersey
Born and raised in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, Crooks was 14 years of age when he became acquainted with soccer and started playing for his high school team as a reserve. He made the move south to the University of Georgia, where he studied broadcast journalism, played for their intramural soccer team, bumped shoulders with the fledgling rock band R.E.M, and coached their intramural side and a local club team. After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in interpersonal communications, Crooks spent the summer of 1980 working at Disneyland before returning to the Garden State, where he quickly found a permanent gig at the local radio station.
“I had already been hired to work at Disney World in Orlando, because I didn’t have a broadcast job yet, and Disney had just built a man-made beach where all of their young men and women fresh out of college would be housed and just work there for the summer as a popcorn vendor or whatever. The only requirement was that you had to shave your mustache and your hair couldn’t be too long, and so I thought that it would be fun to do. When I got back home, I almost immediately got a radio job,” stated Crooks in an exclusive R.Org interview.
“My father was the marching band director at a local high school, and the marching band was performing at a car dealership because they were displaying the largest flag in the United States of America; to me, it’s such a ridiculous concept to actually have a band there. The local radio station was also there, and my dad went up to the guy and said, ‘Hey, my son’s graduating and he wants to be a sportscaster, do you have any openings? It just so happened they were hiring a sports director, a brand-new position, and I ended up getting the job. My whole life could have changed if my dad hadn’t been there with his marching band, introducing himself to the news director at WMTR…life is crazy that way.”
Whilst working at WMTR, an American AM radio station that is licensed to Morris County and the surrounding areas, Crooks mainly focused on the traditionally American sports teams in his region, be that the NHL’s Rangers, the NFL’s Giants and Jets, the MLB’s Yankees and Mets, or the NBA’s Knicks. However, he never strayed far away from the beautiful game of soccer, making a point to give the NASL side New York Cosmos a decent amount of coverage on his network, playing soccer in an indoor league in order to stay in shape, and eventually being asked by local councilman Peter B. Hilgendorff, Jr., to coach his son’s team, kicking off a managerial career that would last four decades. Having previously coached his son, Crooks heeded Hilgendorff’s call and started coaching his daughter’s high school team – as well as his own alma mater – Ridge High School, where he started the women’s soccer program back in 1983 and guided the Red Devils to two state championships and a 140-39-8 record across his decade in charge.
Staking out a Legacy in Coaching
Crooks departed WMTR in 1988 and co-founded his own production company, where he manufactured local commercials and learned the business side of the industry, before deciding to put all of his eggs into the coaching basket and acquire his coaching badges. In 1992, he launched the women’s soccer team at Saint Peter’s University, registering a 26-21-4 (.549) record and earning the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference’s (MAAC) 1994 Coach of the Year Award, before spearheading the Peahens to the 1996 MAAC Tournament title – to this day, he is still the winningest coach in the program’s history. He then made the move to Long Island University Brooklyn, where he once again built a women’s soccer program from the ground up and paved the way for success. Crooks guided the Blackbirds to the Northeast Conference Tournament title and qualified for the 1999 NCAA Tournament in the program’s third season, before making the move to the biggest university in the state: Rutgers University.
“I worked so hard to bring players in from all over the country, including one of the great players in LIU Brooklyn history, Larissa Swartzlander from Arizona, but out of the nine kids I brought in, three of them went home during preseason because they just couldn’t handle Brooklyn; it’s a different environment. They had visited, and everything just seemed fine; they liked that they could take a subway into Manhattan and all of these different things. But they were very sensitive young ladies, as it turned out, and I didn’t recognize that in the recruiting process. I was probably a little blinded because we needed players. I had just 12 players on my roster for the first year, where we had one win, 16 losses, and one draw. It was a really trying year, and my wife was pregnant with our daughter, Morgan, but that year helped me immensely as a person and as a coach, because there was so much adversity. After another recruiting class, we got a lot better and started winning games and hovering around .500 in year two, and after another recruiting class, we ended up winning the conference.”
“We needed to win our last six games in order to finish the top 4 in the conference and get into the postseason tournament, which would then propel you, if you won the championship, into the NCAA tournament. We won six straight games, and then we won two in the tournament. That’s eight consecutive wins at LIU Brooklyn, with Swartzlander scoring the game-winning goal in seven of those eight games. That’s my proudest coaching moment – that string of results with the original group of girls. There were eight of them that stuck it out and went through hell trying to get to that point; for all of us together, it was just a really wonderful moment, along with my assistant, Tracy Farrell. I had some great moments at Rutgers, some incredible things happened there, but that’s really my most satisfying coaching moment.”
Crooks transformed the Scarlet Knights into a national powerhouse across his 13 years at the helm, leading them to 13 straight BIG EAST Championships as well as seven NCAA Tournament bids, including two Sweet Sixteen appearances, and a 155-106-36 record, making him the second-winningest coach in program history. He helped develop the skills of countless promising women’s stars, none more prolific than Carli Lloyd, who would go on to score 134 goals in 315 caps and win two gold medals apiece in both the Women’s World Cup and Summer Olympics. Crooks hasn’t just made an impact at the high school and collegiate level, but the regional level with the Olympic Development Program (ODP) staffs in both Eastern New York and New Jersey, having coached six teams to ODP Regional Championships and three teams to ODP National Championships since starting his ODP journey in 1989. And even after departing Rutgers ahead of the 2014 season, Crooks still coached at the club level with the Players Development Academy all the way until 2024.
Returning to the Broadcasting Industry
Having established an indelible footprint on the New Jersey women’s soccer team, Crooks has spent the past decade rekindling his broadcasting passion, working as an analyst for National Women’s Soccer League side Sky Blue FC (now Gotham FC) as well as a color analyst for both men’s and women’s college soccer matches on the Big Ten Network. And in 2015, Crooks traveled to Canada and co-hosted SiriusXMFC’s World Cup show alongside Michelle Akers, where he was able to interview Lloyd after every game en route to her Golden Ball/Golden Boot/gold medal trophy hall. That same year, he was hired by MLS expansion side New York City FC to become the club’s radio play-by-play announcer, traveling with the team and providing commentary and analysis for all regular and postseason matches on the New York City FC Network.
“It’s been amazing,” says Crooks of his time with NYCFC. “There’s been some morphing along the way – initially, it was big names like David Villa, Andrea Pirlo, and Frank Lampard, as City Football Group felt very strongly about bringing in players of that ilk to get this thing off the ground, but the philosophy changed along the way into younger players like Taty Castellanos. Castellanos had just arrived midweek from Club Atlético Torque, and I asked coach Domènec Torrent, ‘Are you really going to start him? He just got here on Wednesday!’ He said, ‘He’s the best player in training.’ I learned that in pro soccer, you had to put your best players out there, whether they came in last night or whether they’ve been with you for 5 years, but I do know that it did not sit well with some of the players on the team.
Castellanos scored in the 2019 season opener and then struggled mightily as a winger before becoming the default striker after our main #9 Héber injured his knee. I didn’t think it would happen, but Castellanos rotated in there and learned to be a striker, and he’s a success story as to how they morphed into the initiative of signing U-22 players, developing them, selling them, and then building again. That’s what New York City has become – they’re very much a selling team. They bring in the young guys, a lot of South Americans, but also Americans like Joe Scally, who they end up getting a good dime on from Borussia Mönchengladbach.”
“Winning the 2021 MLS Cup Final in Portland was just an unbelievable moment for a franchise whose rivals, the New York Red Bulls, still are in search of their first MLS Cup, having been one of the inaugural teams in 96. I remember going to New York’s first game in Orlando, and seeing them go against another expansion team – the entire downtown was clad in purple, the town hall had a big purple banner with Orlando City emblazoned, the pubs were full, and there were 60,000 people who attended the Citrus Bowl. I was like, ‘Wow! This is MLS? I didn’t know!’ I remember that moment vividly, and certainly the MLS Cup win…there have been some great moments for the team. There were some great ones this year where they won games that they shouldn’t have and scored at the death…those are fun calls, that’s for sure.”
Similarly to Glenn Davis with Houston Dynamo and Dave Johnson and D.C. United, Crooks has emerged as the voice of New York City FC, in addition to also commentating matches for their MLS Next Pro side and contributing as a lead writer for the team, whilst he also produces the weekly ‘On Frame Podcast’ for Pro Soccer USA and The Sick Podcast – NYCFC Views alongside his Spanish-language counterpart Roberto Abramowitz. And in 2022, he travelled to Qatar and covered the FIFA World Cup for various outlets like Sirius, NJ.com and New York Post. Today, Crooks balances his time between commentating matches for New York City FC alongside co-anchor Matty Lawrence and hosting The Coaching Academy, a radio show on SiriusXMFC’s Channel 157, which is predicated upon coach and player education and development with guests from both the professional and youth ranks. But with coaching no longer taking up a massive chunk of his schedule, he’s now finding more and more time to relax with his wife, Mary Chayko, and speak to his two adult children, Ryan and Morgan.
Aging Like Fine Wine
Over the past half-century, Glenn Crooks has etched out a permanent legacy in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area thanks to, among other things, his ability to listen. It’s why he was inducted into the Ridge High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013 and the New Jersey Youth Soccer Hall of Fame in 2018. It’s why he’s completed over 1,200 interviews across his 11-year tenure at Sirius, many of which are being compiled into his three-part book series – his first one, “Put it on Frame: Stories and Strategies from Top Soccer Coaches and Experts (The Crooks Conversations),” was published in November, whilst his second one is set to drop just ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
It’s why he was chosen to host The Carli Lloyd Town Hall, a one-hour special with Lloyd before a live studio audience on SiriusXM FC in New York City. It’s why, when Arsène Wenger retired after a legendary 22 years in charge of Arsenal, then-NYCFC coach and Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira wanted nobody other than Crooks to allow him to discuss just how much Wenger meant to him. It’s why, six years after departing NYCFC, Domènec Torrent still keeps in touch with him and sends him bottles of his beloved red wine. And it’s why, even at 67 years of age, Crooks continues to play a leading role in the New York/New Jersey soccer community.
“Before he got on TV, Larry King did an overnight radio show where he interviewed a lot of authors, and he would brag that he never read the books, and he never prepared for the interviews, but what he did was just listen and ask questions off of that. He’d have a general idea of what’s in the book, and all the guests came on and knew that he hadn’t read the book. But he would somehow perform these interviews, and he was excellent; I was enthralled every time I listened to his interviews. My recommendation to young journalists would be prepare to leave 75% of your questions on the cutting room floor, and the remaining 25% as part of your conversation…most of the time, it’ll work out nicely. Some interviews are better than others just because of who your guest is, you know, you can’t always control that.”
“Listening is so critical in everything we do. It took me time to develop my interviewing skills, and one of the things that really led me to become an effective interviewer is listening…that’s when it becomes a conversation. It’s the same thing when you meet anybody, whether it’s in person, or on the TV, on the phone, or on the radio; people know when you’re listening, and people also know when you’re not listening. Interviewers sometimes get caught in their list of questions, and instead of following up with something that seems obvious, they’ll ignore it, whilst the listeners are saying, ‘Come on, you’ve got to ask this!’ I love that when somebody says, ‘You asked exactly what I would have asked,’ those are the best interviews, mission accomplished, because you know what you want to get out of people, and what you want to learn, and as you’re learning, it ignites other things that you need to ask. But in coaching, it’s the same way. You need to listen to your players because you can learn from them. You need to listen to those above you who are evaluating you, and absorb that information, and then you figure out what works.”