Erin Hanlon (left) and awards chairman Randy Vogt. (Photo courtesy of ENYYSA)

Erin Hanlon has been selected as the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association’s girls recreational coach of the year.

He was nominated by Jody Campbell, who is on the board of directors of the Town of Poughkeepsie Soccer Club, and honored at the Eastern New York holiday party at Marina del Rey in the Bronx Dec. 7.

Hanlon has been an excellent role model for his players. Not only has he done an outstanding job coaching a girls recreational and girls inter-town team for many years, he also serves on the TOPSC board of directors as a division director.

The Poughkeepsie resident assigns players to teams, recruits and spoorts coaches plus schedules games. And if that was not enough, last year he took on the additional position of vice president in charge of field maintenance. He has brought much enthusiasm to this big undertaking and he’s often been found at Greenvale Park doing projects by himself.

Hanlon is a first responder with the Arlington Fire Department and helped his daughter do a community service project for her Girl Scout badge as TOPSC now has a cleat-cleaner for players when leaving Greenvale Park.

Front Row Soccer editor Michael Lewis has covered 13 World Cups (eight men, five women), seven Olympics and 25 MLS Cups. He has written about New York City FC, New York Cosmos, the New York Red Bulls and both U.S. national teams for Newsday and has penned a soccer history column for the Guardian.com. Lewis, who has been honored by the Press Club of Long Island and National Soccer Coaches Association of America, is the former editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He has written seven books about the beautiful game and has published ALIVE AND KICKING The incredible but true story of the Rochester Lancers. It is available at Amazon.com.