Sept. 27, 2024 – Martin Jacobson, the beloved soccer coach of Amsterdam Avenue’s Martin Luther King Jr. High School, points out that “everything I do is a fight.” He goes by “Coach Jake”–made the observation while describing his weekly battle to secure a public park for his team, which he has developed into a NYC powerhouse since he took over thirty years ago. Its transition, from a rag-tag outfit to perennial 20-time championship material, clearly hasn’t made his quest for scarce Manhattan playing fields any easier.
After walking with Jacobson around the bustling lunchroom, where he is greeted with reverent daps from his young team, one can easily believe that few coaches are as highly admired or sought after as he is.
He’s been featured on the CBS show “60 Minutes” and wrote a memoir–with Bill Saporito–that was published by Simon & Shuster, “Becoming Coach Jake: A Story of Overcoming the Odds, on the Soccer Field and Beyond.”
In a truly riveting course of events, his coaching career began about a decade after he overcame a severe heroin addiction. Jacobson has said that he became hooked after an opioid injection on his 35th birthday, in 1981.
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