- December 26, 2024
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FPC coach Cat Bradley takes a selfie earlier this season with JV soccer players Paisley Billeck and Jocelyn Phillips. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Cat Bradley takes a team picture after a game earlier this season. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Cat Bradley on the sideline during a game. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Cat Bradley coaches a JV soccer game. FPC head varsity coach Pete Hald is at left. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC assistant girls soccer coach Cat Bradley likes to take team and group photos after games. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Cat Bradley with soccer player Samantha Burgos. Photo by Brent Woronoff
The game just ended, and Cat Bradley, Flagler Palm Coast’s assistant girls soccer coach, pulls out her phone and takes selfies with the players. It’s a routine. Post-game speeches can wait. After every JV and varsity game, the players pose with Coach Cat.
“It's funny because we made senior boards for the players for Senior Night, and I had a couple girls say, ‘Hey, can I have all your photos?’ And I have all the photos,” Bradley said.
Photos as memories have been important to Bradley since that day in the hospital over 11 years ago, just before her liver transplant, when she had two days to live and they still weren’t sure if she would receive a liver in time.
“That's probably where all that started, because my parents and the people that were visiting me in the ICU, it was, this could be the last photo. I mean, for a couple weeks it was, she's not going to make it. And then I had two days to live, so I just remember everyone taking photos.”
Since then her philosophy has been, “Let’s just take the photo.”
“Why not?” she asks. “You just don’t know. I mean, I love taking photos, and I love the memories that we create. Because a lot of these girls (on JV) will go to varsity, and it's so fun to look back from freshman year to senior year and see the growth and the personalities.”
Cat Bradley is such a positive role model for the girls. She coaches and mentors. She also was an athlete for FPCHS. She’s also had to overcome some personal health adversity.
— ATHLETIC TRAINER RON STEINWEHR, 2024 Standing O
Bradley, 33, is the head JV coach and veteran varsity coach Pete Hald’s top assistant. She has been a coach with the team for 14 years, beginning when she was a freshman at Jacksonville University. But her relationship with Hald and the soccer program goes back even further. She played soccer for four years for Hald at FPC and was a baby sitter for his children. Still, she looks back and doesn’t know why Hald accepted an assistant coach fresh out of high school.
“I was missing soccer,” Bradley said. “I just reached out to Coach Hald, and he said, ‘yeah, sure.’ I’m not sure why he said yes.”
Hald is glad he did.
“I trust that she’s going to run (the JV) part of the program,” he said. “Not that she doesn’t ask me, but I don’t have to worry about them. I can concentrate on the first team.”
Bradley also takes care of the little details, Hald said.
“If I have something that needs to be done, I text her first, like, ‘What do you think about having a team dinner?’ She’ll organize it. Anything I don’t like doing, she does with pleasure. She just goes beyond what is expected.”
That includes taking care of players’ problems.
“If the players have an issue, they sometimes go to her first to work it out. I tell my players, if the issue comes to me, heads are going to roll,” Hald said. “She tries to figure it out so it doesn’t get to that level.”
Bradley has a special relationship with the JV and varsity players. But that doesn’t mean she’s a soft coach. She pushes her players as hard as Hald does.
“Some coaches won’t push us enough. Coach Cat pushes us so we can compete in life,” JV player Malakiyah Neste said. “I just love Coach Cat. She’s the most amazing coach I’ve ever had. Everything she does is for us.”
Jocelyn Phillips said Bradley “brings out the best in us. She’s completely selfless and an amazing person.”
Samantha Burgos, who has been playing soccer for 11 years, since she was 4, said Bradley is her favorite coach in all of that time.
“She pushes you to do what you need to do and what you want to achieve, and she makes it sound encouraging. She's a very kind person,” Burgos said.
Getting out of bed in the morning can be difficult, but I want to get out of bed. I do it not just for myself, but for the (liver) donor, and for all the people around me that have done so much for me over the years.
— CAT BRADLEY
Bradley, who is a paraprofessional at the school, is not just an advocate for FPC girls soccer, she befriends and supports the student athletes in all of the Bulldogs' sports. Her favorite color may be purple, but she bleeds Bulldog green.
“She's big into the social media piece,” Hald said. “She's always complimenting, not just (the girls soccer players) but every program in the school. She's always on the sidelines, she's always going to games.”
“She's a Bulldog,” Principal Bobby Bossardet said. “You know, she always has been. We’re very proud of her for overcoming the challenges that she's been facing in life. I think it's also a good testament to who she is and to have our kids hear her story to help them grow through some adversity.”
Bradley said people don’t understand what a transplant entails. Since receiving a new liver on April 12, 2013 at the age of 21, she’s undergone over 30 surgeries, including three in 2024. She continues to take medication every day.
“I have a super, super weak immune system,” she said. “I can get sick really easily, but I take medicine (three times a day). If I don't take those medications, I'm probably going to be readmitted for liver failure.”
Also, her kidneys don’t always cooperate and she has bad arthritis.
“There's days I wake up and it's just, ‘Man I'm really, really tired. My body really hurts, but we're going to get through it.’ Finding the positives are super important, and that's kind of come with me maturing and getting older, but it’s definitely hard at times.”
Some days she’ll have to wake up at 3 a.m. to get to the hospital for a 5 a.m. appointment and then get to school by 7:30. And if there’s a game that night, she won’t get home until 10 p.m.
“Life is what you make of it,” she said. “Life is really short, and I learned that the hard way when I was literally given a second chance of life. So getting out of bed in the morning can be difficult, but I want to get out of bed. I do it not just for myself, but for the (liver) donor, and for all the people around me that have done so much for me over the years.
“My parents (Charlotte and Jim Bradley) have been amazing, and my boyfriend (FPC teacher Steve Von Glahn) has been with me now through a lot. So now it’s my turn. You’ve got to pay it forward. Being a female coaching girls is so important. When I’m around my players, I just want to do right, I want to do well, I want to do good.”
