After an unexpected first year of college spent sitting in his room listening to endless requests from professors to turn on his Zoom camera, Michael Picchi, a 2024 alum of the School of Public Affairs, was itching for a ball between his cleats, teammates to cheer on and a chance to try out for the team he had been following on Instagram all pandemic long. AU men’s club soccer, or AUFC, was the perfect opportunity to revive his soccer career, one of his lifelong passions.
As tryouts came and went, Picchi wasn’t expecting to receive the email that he had been added to AUFC’s roster as the only sophomore for the upcoming season. Excited to finally be on a team, he soon realized that seniors were prioritized on the field and the team was divided by grade, leaving Picchi with low playing time. Hoping for more recognition, community and an end to their losing streak, Picchi said he wanted to be more involved. After just 16 weeks of being on the team, Picchi wanted to join AUFC’s executive board and was elected treasurer during his junior year.
Picchi, or “Peach” as the team nicknamed him (a mispronunciation of his last name), initially acted as a sponge, absorbing the club's inner workings. He soon realized that the team worked like a puzzle with no reference picture and a missing piece. Picchi said he wanted to overhaul the organization after the pandemic to make it a community that players are proud to be a part of.
“We were playing with the club that had been presented to us at the time,” Picchi said. “We showed up on the weekend, played our game, and got blown out of the water. Then we train twice a week and yell at each other.”
Once elected treasurer, Picchi gained more insight into the group’s leadership operations. He recalls being confused about their approaches and sitting with clenched fists during their meetings.
“For each match, they hop on a Zoom call the night before and just talk in circles for an hour. Then they would get back to the idea of ‘O.K., cool, we’re just going to play all the seniors,’” Picchi said.
Once Picchi accessed the team’s bank account, he realized the University allocated funds to the club during the pandemic. Roughly $10,000 was sitting idle in the organization’s account. With minimal thought, Picchi said he knew exactly how he would spend the team’s newfound wealth.
Few players could attend each game because of a lack of transportation access. Personal cars were the only means of getting to games, so gas expenses were coming out of the players' pockets. This also meant the lucky squad that represented AUFC at their games was short on substitutes, making the games feel longer and less enjoyable. No one had thought to dip into their saved funds.
Subs were left shirtless while slumped over on the bench, wiping away their sweat with their already-perspired wrists. They had to tear off their soaked jersey and lob it to their sub because the team had limited uniforms, which he later allocated funds towards.
Picchi was now gasping for air as he took on more and more of the club's responsibilities. Practically embarking on a full-time position, being a full-time student and maintaining two part-time jobs, he knew he would need support to keep improving the club.
“Picchi was always incredibly committed to the team,” Gianluca Mavica, a 2023 Kogod School of Business alum and previous AUFC president, said. “He was a team-first guy at practice and the last to leave. Often helping to clean up, set up equipment, and talk about tactics.”
Mavica inspired Picchi to keep transforming the club, making the first decisions to become more soccer-oriented. Picchi learned the intricacies that came with the presidency through the guidance of Mavica.
As a rising leader, Alex Stobbe, a 2022 Kogod School of Business alum and former AUFC player, guided Picchi and stepped into a coaching position per the team’s needs. Though the guidance was necessary, Picchi wasn’t fond of Stobbe’s approaches, which often involved less concrete feedback and more expressive bouts of frustration, eventually influencing Picchi’s tactics.
“Sometimes after games, we’d get more of a yelling at than a constructive building up. It felt like we were beating down players too much, which was hard for us to deal with,” Picchi said.
With weeks of racking up losses and losing a 2-point lead during a season-qualifying match, the team could have been better. However, where AUFC saw frustration and defeat, Picchi saw the potential to turn the organization around. He wasn’t ready to quit the sport he dedicated his entire life to. Unlike his predecessors, Picchi recognized specific areas of improvement and made plans to refine them the following year during his presidency.
As the 2023-2024 season started with Picchi as president, he enacted his plans to build a stronger sense of community among the team and develop deeper relationships and involvement with other AU clubs. Ben Calkins, a 2024 graduate from the School of Public Affairs, current AU master’s student in Public Policy Analysis and Picchi’s former teammate, said that Picchi’s emphasis on family and fostering a positive environment alone gave the team more confidence.
“This translated well on and off the field with a more defined identity,” Calkins said. “Logos, an active social media presence, good relationships with several campus groups, and most importantly, dramatically more on-the-field success with more goals and wins during his tenure than any previous season.”
Though this updated team management approach worked, several players missed bonding events. Picchi struggled to get some members to care more about soccer and the organization than their social life, initially making them feel overwhelmed by the club.
“He would struggle with corralling the team to attend extracurricular events,” Tony Kunz, a current AUFC player and sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, recalled. “One flaw was trying to make the club do everything. He had to get the team doing everything, which I think at times we didn’t appreciate.”
However, his coaching style translated to improved stats. In the past, leaders urged the team to pass to one player, knowing he could put the ball in the back of the net. Picchi knew that this approach didn’t produce the wins they wanted. Instead, when he took on more of a coaching position, Picchi stressed that he’d rather a player have an assist than no tallies on the scoreboard.
Initially, Picchi said his teammates opposed the new ideas he was proposing. He wondered why AUFC wanted to continue their worn-out approaches when they had led strictly to losses. The losses were piling up because of their unwillingness to accept a new approach.
Eventually, the team was on board, refusing to accept another defeat. Picchi prevailed, rebounding from the doubts about his approach, dodging the setbacks with team bonding and fending off poor team dynamics.
The results were undeniable.
“Under his leadership, the team qualified for more tournaments,” Stobbe said. “We also maintained a good level of professionalism as well as quality on the field by consistently beating Georgetown [University], George Washington [University] and the University of Maryland.”
Upon Picchi’s graduation in 2024, Leon Bellenbaum, a senior in the School of International Service, took over and continued the success that Picchi built upon, continuing a practical philosophy.
This article was edited by Penelope Jennings, Delaney Hoke, and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Emma Brown and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
