Minding Your Business: Rock Harbor Sports

You can’t think about the beautiful game of soccer here on the Lower Cape and not think about Keith Clark. For decades Clark has been involved in playing, mentoring and coaching soccer in one capacity or another. Owner and president of Rock Harbor Sports and the Monomoy Regional High School varsity boys soccer coach, Clark has been involved in playing and coaching soccer for his entire life. 

“Having played three sports, I enjoy the freedom of the player-centric, continuous action where every player touches the ball and gets to improvise,” Clark said when asked what he enjoys most about the game.

Clark was born and raised in Orleans. He made a career of coaching at various colleges and high schools including Bridgewater State College, Abington, Cohasset, Nauset, and Monomoy high schools, and even a three-year stint working at the US Military Academy West Point as their Division 1 associate head coach.

“Recruiting took place all around the country for West Point because it was a D1 program,” Clark said. “The difficulty was that we were at war in Afghanistan. So recruiting people to play wasn't easy, but it was a really great experience.”

Once back on the Cape, Clark saw a strong need for more organized youth soccer in the mid-1990s. 

“I started out in 1983 as an assistant men’s soccer coach at Babson College,” Clark said. “When I came back to the Cape to work for FELCO Engineering, my friend Carl Rolsten and I started Oceana because there was no spring soccer on Cape Cod. We formed Oceana and it went from Provincetown to Harwich.”

Oceana and the Ultimate Soccer Academy were born under the leadership of Clark. It was a league comprising clinics, camps and team play for kids in the local towns. It is now known as Nauset Youth Soccer and it is part of the South Coast Soccer League. 

Through Rock Harbor Sports, Clark has also created two of the most anticipated regional youth athletic events of the year: the Memorial Day weekend and Columbus Day weekend soccer tournaments. The games bring more than 200 teams into the area and are highly anticipated events year after year.

In the summer, Rock Harbor Sports hosts youth soccer camps for boys and girls in grades six to 12. These take place at Cape Cod Regional Tech School in Harwich in July. There is also a popular co-ed middle school camp in August at Monomoy Regional High School.  

If the camps and clinics and varsity coaching weren't enough, Clark also keeps busy lining the fields for local organizations and school’s athletic departments. He is also the commissioner of the Cape Cod Amateur Soccer League which is made up of eight teams around the Mid and Lower Cape.

“I have been involved with soccer at all different levels from professional to coaching,” Clark said. “I want to make sure these kids enjoy the experience and they learn the game so they can give back to the game. With my high school players I try to help them navigate from being boys to young men and character development is important there.”

Be sure to check out all of the Rock Harbor Sports summer camps now — space is filling up! There are early registration deals on the website, capecodsoccercamps.com, where you can also register athletes.

Rock Harbor Sports Group

capecodsoccercamps.com

(508) 930-5980