Martin Gramatica introduces Strikers soccer to Tampa Bay

TAMPA — Martin Gramatica already was juggling his job as a broadcaster for the Buccaneers, working with a medical imaging company and coaching youth soccer when the call came in. The National Indoor Soccer League was coming to Tampa Bay and wanted him to coach its men’s and women’s teams.

“My youth soccer team made nationals, so we were in Colorado,” Gramatica recalled. “So the first thing I said is, ‘Look, I’m doing so much, I’m busy.’ I’m coaching my kids. I do the Bucs Spanish radio. I work at an imaging company where we do preventative scans. I’m busy.”

Gramatica wondered how he could possibly fit coaching the new pro teams into his schedule. The more he thought about it, however, the former Bucs kicker wondered how he could possibly pass up the opportunity. It was a position that would combine two of the loves of his life: soccer and Tampa Bay.

So, Gramatica will make his debut as coach of the Tampa Bay Strikers Sunday, when they play the Columbus (Georgia) Rapids at 2 p.m. at Yuengling Center on the campus of USF in Tampa to open their first season.

Each scheduled date is a doubleheader with both the men’s and women’s teams playing. The game features unique rules like15-minute quarters, with five players and a goalkeeper on a 200-foot long field.

“For the casual fans, I think it’s more like hockey,” Gramatica said. “So the fans that aren’t really soccer fans, they may end up loving indoor soccer. ... (It’s) very high-paced, a lot of scoring,”

The back-and-forth action on a smaller playing surface reminds Gramatica a bit of basketball, too.

“Every player attacks, every player defends,” he said. “It’s not like, oh, you’re forward, so you’d sit up there and wait for the ball to get to you, because that’s not going to happen. You’ve got to come back and defend.

“... That’s why I think the casual fan will love it and the soccer fan can love the fact that we have another chance to watch a different type of soccer, but it’s soccer. So yeah, it’s exciting to be able to reach a bigger and a broader audience.”

While known for his 10 years in the NFL, Gramatica was born in Argentina and soccer was his first love. That endured after his family moved to Florida when he was 9 and he began his journey to becoming a placekicker in American football.

After his playing days, Gramatica joined the soccer community in Tampa Bay, where his children grew up. He began coaching his sons, who are now playing on the under-19 teams, and his 11-year old daughter.

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He has drawn from his NFL experience and the coaches he played for to teach the kids at West Florida Flames East Lake, the youth soccer program where he has coached for the last couple of years.

“Especially from Tony Dungy,” Gramatica said of the former Bucs Hall of Fame coach. “The first thing I tell (the players) is we have the same rules as we had with Tony Dungy. We have no excuses and no explanations. That’s the rules we will live by.”

Gramatica knew a lot of the players who tried out for the Strikers because of his experience coaching in Tampa Bay’s youth soccer community. That the team was going to include local players was a big draw for him, he said.

The Strikers had open tryouts in Tampa Bay during the summer and fall to build their rosters. The 19-player women’s roster includes Puerto Rican national team member and University of Tampa alum Madison Cox, plus USF player Bri Blethen. The men’s team features several Tampa Bay residents, including Skylar Wilks, who played at Florida Gulf Coast University, and Hermon Constant, who played at Saint Leo University.

“The best thing, and in the end the main reason I took this job was that (they) wanted local talent,” Gramatica said. “We’re not out scouting European kids or South American kids and bringing them in. We’re taking local kids who have either played college or in our youth system. They are players that are living in Tampa Bay, and this is their home.

“That really made it interesting to me, because I want our local kids that have that goal (to continue playing soccer) to see that pathway, to say, ‘Look, if I played locally, I played college locally, there is a chance to play professional indoor soccer in my hometown.’

“... I would have never taken this job if it made me move from Tampa,” he continued. “If this job was in Orlando or Fort Myers, wherever, I would have said no. This is my home. So the chance to stay home and coach at a professional level and to coach players from Tampa, that was what was exciting to me.”

Game details

vs. Columbus (Georgia) Rapids, 2 Sunday (men’s and women’s games)

Yuengling Center, USF campus, Tampa

Tickets: https://www.tbstrikers.com/tickets