Photos by Marjorie Elzey

A.J. Cawley had done his homework.

As Senior Account Exec for Union Group Sales, Cawley reached out to Holy Spirit High School to set up a group ticket purchase for the March 16 match against Nashville SC, the team coached by Spirit alum B.J. Callaghan.

The Spartan’s boys soccer coach Matt Custer (PSP’s managing editor) agreed to set up the trip from Absecon NJ under one condition: a chance for the boys to meet Callaghan in person. So Cawley and Nashville’s PR Director Sean Lansing went to work.

An hour before game time five Spartans and their families got to meet coach Callaghan in one of Subaru Park’s locker rooms for a remarkable conversation about the coach’s high school soccer experience.

While Holy Spirit’s girls soccer has posted 11 winning seasons since 2010, until 2024 Spirit had not been known as a school of choice for many of the Jersey Shore’s serious boys soccer players. Callaghan’s 1997 and 1998 teams were no exception.

“In my last two seasons there, we won one game and we might have tied another,” he explained. Callaghan was the goalkeeper for those teams and his dad was the coach.

BJ Callaghan, Holy Spirit High School Goalkeeper, 1998 season

So how do you go from such futility to having a career in pro soccer? Callaghan made it sound simple.

“A bunch of us would load into the car and make the drive down to Cape Express,” the powerhouse club down the Shore in the nineties.  “And we drove to matches up and down the (Garden State) Parkway and all over New Jersey.”

Club soccer was the antidote to high school frustration. But being forced to stop hundreds of shots for his high school team proved to be a blessing in disguise for Callaghan – it helped to sharpen his goalkeeping skills.

Callaghan went on to play collegiate soccer at Ursinus College, making 250 career saves, fourth in school history at the end of his final season.

“When I graduated, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, until one of the coaches suggested that maybe I should take a coaching job myself,” Callaghan said.

Maybe it was in the genes. His dad was a coach and he’s the grandson of Villanova basketball coaching legend Jack Kraft.  Thus began his life as a coach at:

• Ursinus College
• St. Joseph’s University
• Villanova University
• Philadelphia Union
• USMNT
• Nashville SC

Callaghan seemed to enjoy the chance to meet members of his alma mater’s current team as he described what it’s like to be a soccer lifer.  When it was suggested that maybe he had better cut the conversation short to get back to his team, he said, “They’re warming up out there right now and I’m the last thing they want to see.” The meeting with the lads from Spirit was not to be interrupted.

(After COVID shrank the 2020 and 2021 seasons, Holy Spirit’s boys team shut down completely in 2022. After a winless 2023, the Spartans went 5-12-2 in 2024)