6 June 2024
The Maine Central Institute girls soccer team from Pittsfield hadn’t had a winning season since 1997 until Dale Overlock took over the program four years ago.
MCI posted a 43-10-2 regular season record under Overlock including back–to-back unbeaten regular seasons in 2022 (14-0) and 2021 (13-0). Two of his teams reached the playoff semifinals and the other two lost in the quarterfinals.
Now, the 43-year-old Overlock will try to turn around the fortunes of the Hampden Academy girls team after being named the new head coach.
He will replace Chris Hink, who stepped down after posting a 19-30-7 regular season record in his four seasons at the helm.
Hampden Academy went 4-8-2 last fall and wound up ninth in the Class A North Heal points standings. The Broncos missed the playoffs.
Overlock had also previously coached the girls team at Bangor Christian and has coached at the club level including River City and the Bangor Soccer Club.
He has also coached basketball and baseball and just finished his first season as the head baseball coach at MCI.
He intends to continue to coach baseball at MCI.
“We liked the fact that he had varsity head coaching experience and that he had success at MCI,” said Hampden Academy athletic director Barry Terrill. “He has many years of experience as a coach in several different sports and at many different levels.”
Overlock is excited about his new opportunity at Hampden Academy.
“I live in Newburgh so this is the closest (school) for me. And my family is in the school system,” said Overlock, who is the pastor at the Steadfast Church in Carmel.
Overlock and his wife Jill have three children: Iris, Owen and Charlotte. They are home-schooled but participate in the athletic programs at different levels in Hampden.
He said he did watch the Hampden Academy girls team play last fall when he wasn’t coaching his MCI team and observed that they had a lot of talented kids.
“It will be a matter of getting them all on the same page and working together,” Overlock said.
He also found that the players lacked confidence, especially if they fell behind, so he will begin trying to restore their confidence during the summer program which will begin after school gets out.
“When the players have confidence and they believe in themselves, their effort goes up. That’s a big thing,” said Overlock. “I am a big proponent of summer soccer. It makes a big difference. It enabled us to have a lot of success at MCI.”
Overlock was the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Coach of the Year for B-C schools in 2022.
Overlock is a Carmel native and played soccer, basketball and baseball at Hermon High with soccer being his primary sport.
He was a sweeper his senior year at Hermon and he said he is a defensive coach first.
“A lot of people put their best players or their fastest players up front,” said Overlock. “I’m kind of the opposite of that. My best and fastest players are probably going to play defense for me.
“There will be a defensive priority. We’re starting something called the Bronco Way. There will be a standard that will have to be adhered to,” said Overlock.
Hampden Academy had seven straight winning seasons between 2010-2016 but has had just one since and that was in 2019 (7-5-2).
He is excited about his first job as a head coach in Class A.
MCI is in Class C after being a Class B school in his first season.
Bangor Christian is in Class D.
“One of the biggest changes I noticed in Class A and something I am looking forward to is it is a lot more finesse soccer,” said Overlock. “It works well when you coach the players and they are able to use their skills.
“At the other levels I coached at, it was more physicality than finesse. Soccer is a physical sport anyway but at the Class A level, you can put players with skills in better positions,” he said.
He said he knows a lot of his players through his experience coaching at the club level.
Overlock is a graduate of Husson University/New England School of Communications.