By Connor Latlip

The Jag

He is a soccer coach and a science teacher at South. His name is Matt Swanson. 

Swanson grew up in a small town called Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. He moved to Missouri because his wife is from Missouri, and after he met her, he wanted to stay.  

Swanson went to a small college called Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Then he transferred to Arizona State University where he majored in education and political science and minored in world history and geography.  

He started teaching at Raymore-Peculiar, then he taught at Odessa middle school for one year, where he started the boys and girls soccer programs and then he moved to Blue Springs. Swanson likes teaching because of the interactions that he has with the students.  

“I enjoy the interaction with kids and thinking that, hopefully, I’m making a difference.” Swanson said. 

He wasn’t always a teacher. He took a sales position, and he did that for quite a while, but education and teaching kept on calling out to him.  

“It just kept pulling me back,” Swanson said.  

Swanson is involved in sports here at South, he is a boys and girls soccer coach. He coaches the Delta Woods boys’ basketball team.  

He didn’t play soccer when he was growing up. Instead, he played baseball, football, and hockey. The way he got involved in soccer was that his daughter started playing soccer. While he was a goalkeeper in hockey, Swanson taught his daughter to become a goalkeeper. That sparked his interest in soccer.  

Swanson’s main reason why he likes coaching soccer is because it reminds him of hockey.  

 “I like coaching period, and soccer makes sense to me, because I can see it as it’s happening on the field, and I think that’s because it is similar, movement wise to hockey,” said Swanson. 

His favorite soccer memory was when the women’s world team won the world cup for the first time.