Colby Gay (left) and Alex Ortega (right)
Former Milton High School soccer players Colby Gay and Alex Ortega rarely crossed paths.
With Ortega being five years older, Gay says he remembers him showing up to a few pick up games, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the two met on opposite sides of the pitch.
Gay as a player for Castlelton University and Ortega as an assistant coach for Colby-Sawyer, the two faced off in the 2017 North Atlantic Conference Championship.
Now, Gay and Ortega both are assistant coaches at high-level college soccer teams. Gay at SUNY Cortland and Ortega at Amherst College.
For Milton soccer, on top of the enormous success the program has been able to achieve throughout its history and recent years, having two former players continue their careers in soccer at a high level is another achievement to add to the list.
Both Gay and Ortega say they take the influence of Milton soccer with them in their current coaching positions and their journey up until this point.
“I always had the underdog mentality,” Gay said. “And I think a lot of that was especially when I was growing up in Milton.”
“I felt like I always had something to prove coming from a smaller town,” Ortega said. “Playing with a chip on my shoulder, so that definitely segwayed into my college career.”
Colby Gay follows a Milton Soccer legacy
Gay was in Dubuque, Iowa on a Friday when staff at SUNY Cortland called and asked if he could fly to Syracuse for an in-person interview that coming Monday.
Gay said absolutely. He flew into Syracuse, was picked up at a hotel and driven to Cortland. The next day, he had his visit and was off back to Dubuque that night.
Wednesday afternoon, they called him and offered him the job.
“Which was, at this point, one of the proudest moments in my soccer career in general,” Gay said.
His journey up until that point was a bit of a roller coaster, searching for what he wanted to do.
At a young age in Milton, Gay was following in the footsteps of his parents, he said. His father was a fantastic former Milton High School Twin State soccer player and his mother was an incredible Essex High School Twin State soccer player.
Gay’s father was his coach in Milton Youth Soccer from 4 years-old until around 12. Their team would do extremely well, Gay said.
“We would go to the Nordic Cup, which is mainly club teams, not town rec teams,” he said. “And our town team would go and win the whole thing, just a town rec team. So it was clear that we had a group of guys that were high level players at a young age.”
Gay said that despite his parents, he was not gifted with inate atheltic ability. He had to work harder to get better and he showed up to practice and games knowing that.
After playing Milton High School varsity soccer for four years, Gay pursued a career in teaching, earning his degree at Castleton University. But soccer remained an ever-present force in his life as he played college soccer for Castleton and coached at a soccer camp for some summers in Massachusetts.
Gay’s first head coaching job was with a Milton Youth Soccer team during a two-month gap between finishing at Castleton and heading to camp in Massachusetts. He said he remembers how special that was, to coach players on the same fields he played on when he was much younger.
Looking back, Gay said as soon as he started coaching he knew enjoyed it more than playing and wanted to continue doing it.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Gay was finishing up student teaching. After receiving his teaching license, he decided to steer away from teaching Social Studies (which Milton Middle School offered him a position for) and instead teaching what he was truly passionate about: soccer.
He applied to every coaching job he saw, finally landing as the assistant coach of a men’s Division III team at University of Dubuque through a connection at his camp in Massachusetts.
Gay said that arriving in Iowa, 17 and a half hours away from his home in Vermont, he had a bit of blind confidence.
Previously, the oldest players he had coached were U14. Now, Gay was about to be coaching players in their 20s as a 22 year-old himself. There were even five players on the team who were older than he was.
Now, taking the job at SUNY Cortland feels like a homecoming. His parents, who were so influential in his soccer career, can now come to more games.
Alex Ortega finds a soccer passion instilled in Milton
Ortega remembers as his time at Milton High School waned, debating whether or not he wanted to play at the college level.
During Ortega’s four seasons at MHS — 2007 to 2010 — the team earned a total of 53 wins, 12 losses and 2 ties. Today, looking back, Ortega says he owes a lot to the coaches that helped him through high school.
“My coaches encouraged me to stay with soccer in college, because I wasn’t sure about playing,” he said. “And then especially Coach Button was like, ‘Hey, you got to keep playing. If you’re not ready to give it up, listen to yourself.’”
Since then, Ortega has had immense success at higher levels.
Looking at Ortega’s stats from his time as a player at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, you wouldn’t guess his humble beginnings.
By the time Ortega graduated from Colby-Sawyer, he had played in all 80 games across his career with 62 starts, earning the second most points in program history, the second most goals in program history and the fourth most assists in program history.
But Ortega said soccer happened naturally. Neither of his parents were players and even leading up to through high school, Ortega said he was never the best player.
When Ortega reached the age where most kids start looking to play for club teams in middle school, he stayed with Milton Youth Soccer. Because he wanted to play basketball as well, he couldn’t commit to playing soccer year round.
Ortega never thought about possibly being a coach while he was a player. He had dreams of becoming a sports writer for ESPN.
But in the fall of his senior year at Colby-Sawyer, his coach approached him and said he had the demeanor for it. Then he brushed it off mostly, but when the season finally ended, Ortega said he realized he wasn’t ready to give up soccer yet.
When his college roommate passed on the assistant coaching job at the college, Ortega stepped in.
That year Ortega was coaching the guys who he had just been teammates with six months prior, which was challenging. But hitting a stride his second year, he developed his coaching voice and style.
Since then, Ortega has coached at Clark University and Ralph Macon College, before his current Amherst position.
“I’m just blessed. To have had such a good career at Colby-Sawyer and being in the record book for everything, like, that’s all great, but it’s the people that I was around who really helped me decide ‘coaching is your path,’” he said.
He said he’s glad he listened to them and he can’t imagine doing anything else right now.
Milton Soccer inspiration
In retrospect, both Ortega and Gay see the way they conduct themselves with their teams and in their lives as directly influenced by their time playing soccer in Milton.
Both say that they were constantly expected to reach their fullest potential regardless of their technical talent and skill.
The success in Milton came from hard work, brutal conditioning and a relentless commitment to winning.
“I didn’t play for a big club at all but my teammates in college did,” Ortega said. “You look back like you got a pretty good career in college and people asked me ‘What club did you play for?’ and I was like I didn’t. I think I worked harder than most people but that was just kind of what you had to do to be a Milton player.”
Ortega said that often Milton soccer wasn’t the prettiest, but the style was more physical, more “in your face.”
He said the passion from the coaching staff rubbed off on the players and Ortega said he still takes that emotion with him to his coaching at Amherst College.
Gay said in Milton, you were always proving everyone wrong, always underestimated.
“Have your thoughts now but when it gets onto the field we have a point to prove,” Colby remembers thinking during the early days. “I feel like that really resembles a lot of what Milton is.”
With Ortega at Amherst and Gay at SUNY Cortland, it’s possible the two may meet again in the national tournament, a battle of the Milton Assistant Coaches.