Nick TheslofGrandma taught him how to ice skate around the time he was learning to walk, which didn’t really turn out to be much of a life skill as Theslof went on to play professional soccer, not hockey.
But Theslof learned another lesson from his grandmother simply by being around her. And it has proven to be infinitely more valuable.
“She was my example,” said Galaxy assistant coach Theslof. “She was inspiring just watching her move and talk because she was a little different. You don’t fully understand it, but you want to be at that level.
“That’s something I realized at a very young age. “I wanted to try to succeed and be good like my grandmother.”
We should all strive to achieve and be good as Vivi-Anne HultenOlympic medalist and ten-time national champion figure skater in the 1920s and 1930s, who was once hailed as Sweden’s greatest female athlete. However, Theslof remembers her grandmother not for her medals, which she keeps on display in her Lakewood home, but for a simple act of profound courage and character that came to define her.
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As Hulten approached the medal podium after finishing third in the 1936 Winter GamesHe was told he would have to perform a Nazi salute in honor of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. She refused.
“At that moment, it’s hard for me to explain the amount of integrity and bravery it took for a woman to stand up for herself in that environment in Germany,” Theslof said. “She had a way of doing it at the time. It wasn’t about skating. “It was about his integrity.”
Hulten, who left Sweden for the United States and taught skating in the Carolinas, Tennessee and Minnesota, eventually followed his family to Southern California, where died in 2003 at the age of 91. By then, Nick’s playing days had ended due to a serious Achilles injury and he was on the second stop of a coaching career that would take him to eight teams in four countries, a career in which he would coach at a World Cup. with Germany and win an MLS title in Toronto.
He could win another MLS Cup this fall with the Galaxy, who On Saturday he took another big step to win their first Western Conference title in 13 years. But like his grandmother, Theslof won’t let his career be defined by shiny awards that will lose their luster over time.
“The important thing for me is that everyone in this building knows who I am and trusts me, they know I can help them,” said Theslof, 48, who won a national title at UCLA and played in the Dutch giant’s youth program. PSV Eindhoven remains among the least recognized members of a coaching staff that includes three MLS stars and three national team players.
“My name is not synonymous with the things my colleagues have done,” he said. “I am very happy for them. But I’m also happy to be different.”
In this case different does not mean inferior. And Theslof’s colleagues know very well what he brings to the job.
“Nick’s superpower, his ability to understand how each player works with the ball, is spectacular.” Greg Vanney, Galaxy coach he said about his ex UCLA teammate. “Nick manages and observes the players a lot, how they move and how they move with the ball, to create more efficiencies or technical improvements. “He is one of the best I have ever met.”
That’s also something Theslof said he learned from his grandmother, who was 64 when he was born.
“As a child, when I watched my grandmother teach ice skating and teach humans how to act, I was always so amazed at how she saw the body and balance and the little technical things that allowed people to perform better than a normal person. maybe I won’t see it,” he said, sitting under an umbrella on the concourse of Dignity Health Sports Park last week after a morning training session. “She would take her time and really slow things down and make sure the human was moving correctly. I found that fascinating.”
Theslof grew up playing hockey in Minnesota, where his grandmother, who had toured with the Ice Capades, ran a skating school whose clients included Herb Brooks’ gold medal-winning U.S. hockey team.
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“One afternoon she came to our house and Brooks was with her,” Theslof recalled. “And we go to a hockey store and buy a stick. “I’ve had a unique life and some unique experiences.”
Although Theslof’s grandmother had statues erected in her honor in Hungary and at the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and Museum in Colorado and performed for the king and queen of Sweden in her 80s, she is probably best remembered for her snub to Hitler and his dispute. with the legendary Norwegian skater sonja henie.
After being ordered to salute the German dictator, Hulten told interviewers decades later that she responded by saying, “I’m Swedish; “I don’t do that.”
“I just looked at it,” he said. “He was a scary person.”
The long dispute with Henie, a three-time gold medalist and ten-time world champion, was much more personal and cruel, with both sides exchanging scathing insults. And although the rivalry came to define skating for a generation, Theslof said his grandmother had the last laugh.
“Sonja Henie used to date my grandfather,” she said of Gene Theslof, who was Henie’s skating partner before he left her to marry Hulten.
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Although Hulten helped bring Nick Theslof to the ice as a child, he quickly transitioned to soccer and by age 15 was in Holland playing in Eindhoven. He returned to the US to win an NCAA championship at UCLA under Sigi Schmid before injuries forced him to train.
“People said, ‘Well, you have a good eye for coaching,’” Theslof said. “I knew that my grandmother trained a lot. For me, training was the second best thing after playing. I feel like I had grown up with kind of a coaching, teaching and performance side.”
In his first job, as an assistant at Ohio Wesleyan, he won an NCAA Division III title and then worked under Jurgen Klinnsman with the German national team and Bayern Munich, then at Chivas USA.
In 2014 he joined Vanney’s staff at Toronto FC and the two have been together ever since.
“There’s a little bit of effort in training, then you come out the other side in performance and you feel good,” he said. “I’m proud not only of the successes the teams I’ve been on have had, but also of the players I’ve built relationships with.”
You’ve read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and highlights unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of “Corner of the Galaxy Podcast.
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
