Former Raider to guide boys’ soccer
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Even though he has spent most of his life on the Hun School campus, Pat Quirk didn’t expect to be back so soon — especially in a head coaching capacity.
The son of Hun School athletic directors Bill and Kathy Quirk, Pat grew up on campus and attended the school for grades 6-12. Now, just two years after graduating from Dickinson College, Quirk is back at Hun as an Upper School math teacher and the new head boys’ soccer coach.
”My mom always said I would be a teacher and a coach,” said Quirk, who spent the past two years as a varsity assistant to Chris Kingston. “I didn’t listen to her much as I was growing up and starting college, but she turned out to be right. I did not think I would end up back here at Hun. I originally planned not to come back to Hun and was looking to establish myself someplace else. But then this job opened up and I knew the kids and I felt like this was where I should be and what I wanted to do.”
Quirk played three years of varsity soccer at Dickinson after a four-year career at Hun. While at Hun, he played for Rob Myslik as a freshman and then three years under Bob Schwartz. He feels like most of what he will do as a coach came from what he learned from those coaches at Hun.
”I feel like the coaches I played for and coached with at Hun all had similar philosophies,” Quirk said. “Schwartz and Kingston both had similar philosophies and they both played under Rob Myslik. I learned most of my philosophy on coaching soccer and the way the game should be played from them. I feel like I will bring the same style of play they did and continue to have our team play that way.”
Quirk initially went to college with an eye on the business world. But it didn’t take long for him to start to realize that was not his true calling.
”Halfway through college I realized that my economics degree was not really what I wanted to do with my life,” said Quirk, who also played baseball and basketball at Hun and will be the school’s JV basketball coach in the winter. “I started taking education classes and I went through the graduate program at The College of New Jersey. Originally, I was looking at elementary education and getting into coaching. But when this opportunity came up to teach at the high school level and coach high school kids, I took it.”
Now he’ll look to continue the run of success Hun has enjoyed under his mentors — Myslik, Schwartz and Kingston.
”It’s been going well so far,” said Quirk, whose team will open the regular season on Sept. 13 at West Windsor-Plainsboro South. “We’re going to be a young team. But we have a nice core group of kids coming back that we can build around. We have five seniors that played a lot of varsity last year. And we have a strong sophomore class and our freshman class is strong.”
For Pat Quirk, the opportunity to be the head coach at his alma mater may have come sooner than he expected, but the former Raider is looking forward to the challenge.

