Late into his introductory press conference, D.C. United coach Troy Lesesne showed a keen knowledge of the club’s history by discussing the Coffee Pot Cup rivalry between D.C. and the Charleston Battery, saying that as a teenager, “I was meant to go to the game at Blackbaud Stadium…but I ended up getting sick and I couldn’t be (there),” Lesesne said.

Lesesne would later play for the Battery in 2005 and 2006, serving double duty when he was an assistant for the College of Charleston beginning in 2005. Lesesne moved to assistant on the professional side with the Battery in 2014 under Mike Anhaeuser, who was a longtime Battery stalwart in his own right for over two decades beginning as a player in 1994 and remaining as coach until 2021. Lesesne left the Battery staff after the 2014 season, joining Mike Jeffries and the Charlotte Independence in their first year in 2015.

“Troy’s name came highly recommended,” Jeffries recalled. “Even though he was just barely 30 at the time, he knew he wanted to be a successful professional soccer coach. We had good conversations on the soccer end, he’s a guy with a ton of integrity. The job in those days was you could be an assistant coach, but there was so many more things that we all had to do to make it work as a team and he was onboard with all of it. Whether it was having to keep soccer balls and gear in his car or jumping fields, he did a very good job. He was always prepared for discussions we were going to have, he had his own ideas, and wasn’t afraid to voice them, and also didn’t get his feelings hurt if I didn’t go in that direction.”

Joining Lesesne as part of Jeffries’ staff in Charlotte was Joel Tyson, now the Head Coach of the men’s soccer team at Wofford College. Yet long ago, Wofford was where he met Lesesne: “(in 2011) he was the assistant coach at College of Charleston when I was the assistant coach here,” Tyson remembered. “Those two head coaches (Ralph Lundy at Charleston and Ralph Polson at Wofford) ran a soccer academy that I think everybody in the southeast from 1985 to 2005 probably participated in as a kid. So Troy and I met each other kind of through that.”

Tyson’s thoughts at true first impression may have bit a little less generous: “We actually joke about it (now), but my first impression of Troy was I despised him,” Tyson says. “Part of it was because I was a goalkeeper and so our side of things was very regimented, I think we had a certain demeanor. And Troy would do all these elaborate camp demos where he’d be in front of 500 kids, teaching technical skills and possession. And he just had this incredible outgoing, larger than life personality that just captivated all the kids. And I hated it! It didn’t come around until he and I just kind of met one day, and just started having conversations about life and where we were from. We’re both from Columbia (South Carolina), we both grew up in the same kind of family background, a bit of a tough upbringing in some ways. So we just connected on a personal level. So I came to appreciate that he was doing that personality for the love of the game and trying to teach kids a little bit, so I grew to respect him after that. We became very, very close just because the proximity of the programs and got the chance to meet together through summer camps. I think that’s kind of what makes Troy so unique, he’s probably one of the few coaches in MLS that’s gone through and coached at every stop along the pyramid, so I think it’s a pretty special kind of rise for him.”

Even as a newly minted professional coach, Jeffries had the sense of Lesesne’s potential. “The big plus for coming here was maybe the opportunity to be the top assistant in a professional program, and (he) was not shy about picking my brain and trying to find out what it’s like and how you go about running a professional club. One of the things you learn when you’re in a system is what things work for you and what things don’t. And I think Troy had a pretty good sense of who he was and what he wanted to do when he ran a team, but (he) also was open to learning different things both on the field and in setting up the culture was is a big part of it.”

Lesesne left the Carolinas for the West in 2018, serving as Head Coach and Technical Director of New Mexico United starting in their inaugural season in 2019. Jeffries knows when coaches feel like they’re ready, and for Lesesne, “I would say very confident from my end after the second year. Then it became a question of trying to find the right move in the right place for himself to be successful, which is not always easy. I think probably by the third year (he was) getting antsy at that point and was ready to go out and push it on his own.”

“At the end of the 2017 season I knew he was ready to go,” Tyson added. “He got offered a head coaching job by Penn FC, which was the old Harrisburg City Islanders. We joke about this a lot, he was supposed to go, then the contract negotiations fell through because they weren’t willing to budge on some stuff. And we met at a Cracker Barrel to have breakfast and he was devastated because I think he thought ‘this was it, I’m going to be a Head Coach for the first time.’ And he was in the tank, I’ve never seen anything like it. Working in Charlotte was great; his wife’s family’s from there, we had a great thing going with Mike, it was a great place to work. But seeing him have to wrap his head around being an assistant coach for another year, you could tell it was eating him alive. Even though he was with (Charlotte) at the start of 2018, he was not checked out by any means, you could tell there was a piece of him that was being pulled in a different direction.”

Tyson discusses how he almost accompanied his friend to the West: “I was supposed to follow him out when he got the head coaching job there, and at the last second I got offered the head coaching job here (at Wofford). And it would have been very comfortable for me to go there and continue with Cody Mizell (D.C.’s current goalkeeper coach), but because of being around Troy, seeing his personality with the team, seeing what his ambitions were, and how confident and how well he knew the game, I knew I wouldn’t be able to aspire to be at that point unless I went out and did things for myself.”

In Lesesne’s first year, New Mexico hit the ground running, drawing more than 12,000 fans to each of their home games and a US Open Cup run to the Quarterfinals, including wins over two MLS sides. 2020 saw the team advance to the Conference Quarterfinals despite playing all of their games away from New Mexico due to Covid-19 (Lesesne received Co-Coach of the Year honors). The team remains in the Top 4 for attendance and elements such as Community Relations and Academy system were developed with Lesesne’s participation. Jeffries does relish his role in helping Lesesne grow. “The environment turned out to be more exciting than anyone expected going into it. Credit to him for setting it up, and I think he had a pretty good idea and (I hope) he got to learn from some of the things that we did that were successful setting things up here.”

“I don’t know if anybody could have predicted that the type of explosion in that club had in terms of attendance and stuff like that,” Tyson said. “But I think all of the things he did there I would expect him to do in D.C. as well, he has a really keen vision and a top-down approach connecting through the layers and levels of the organization. I don’t know what the structure is in D.C. United (now), but once he gets his head around the job I would fully expect him to integrate Loudoun United and Academy programs. He believes in more of a holistic approach to a football club than the first team. All of the stuff he did in New Mexico was not a surprise by any means (to me) because that’s how he’s always been and how he’s always operated.”

Lesesne’s position as a coach of D.C. as it relates to Loudoun United reflects this sense of optimism; he met with the players before departing for Saudi Arabia, and has a kinship with coach Ryan Martin: “I’ve know Troy since I was an assistant at Wake (Forest) and he was at Charleston, I texted him when he got the job and said congrats,” Martin explained. “He’s made it very clear to me that he wants a very positive relationship between the club, the players, him and myself. He wants a very collaborative approach with is very refreshing. I wake up today (before a recent Loudoun preseason game) to a text that said ‘good luck,’ and he wants to see our games, he wants to see how the guys are doing, maybe who can come play for him in the future. He and I text or call pretty much every other day on something, he’s a good person first and foremost.”

No matter the level, Head Coaches take pride in their assistants’ achievements after they leave, and for Jeffries, now entering his 10th year with Charlotte and his fourth decade in coaching (first as an assistant with the USISL New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers before stops including the Dallas Burn and Chicago Fire), Lesesne is no different. “I feel good that a lot of the guys that have come in here and advance their careers in different ways. I keep up with them and want to see how they’re doing, and as equals we still bounce ideas off each other.”

The coaching fraternity remains a close one; Jeffries still speaks with Lesesne and was one of the people Lesesne spoke to about the opportunity as well: “We spoke somewhere in between when the interview came up and looking at it pretty well in hand. I just got the chance to say good luck and I felt like the timing was right, it was a really good opportunity.”

Tyson provides some clarity: “I think he wanted the Red Bull opportunity to work out. He knew the club, he was in the process of really doing the integration of working through the club. But when that didn’t come to fruition, having a club give him the responsibility and showing loyalty that they wanted him like D.C. did, he was full throttle, (wanting) to get his hands around the team. Troy’s a very optimistic person in terms of how he approaches a team. He’s the kind of person who’s going to be more solution-oriented, and I don’t think there was any hesitancy or apprehension (on taking the D.C. job), it was more seeing what he has and finding solutions to solve the problems from there.”

“Troy has an unbelievable amount of emotional intelligence and tact, that’s a huge strong point of his,” Tyson continues, “so he has the ability to read people, and read situations very well. He was never trying to step on Mike’s toes, he was there to complement him, and he also had the ability to read players extremely well, where to push them and where to back off. It’s allowed him to be a really successful head coach as well.”

Tyson expands on this: “He’s very smart about understanding tone, when to motivate with a bit of angst versus talking to a group and be more cerebral about it. And that’s helped me in my career. I think sometimes people think ‘head coach’ and they think that they always try to get ‘stuck in’ to a team. I think Troy does a good job of being more cerebral at times and balancing a bit more. In between training exercises (at Charlotte), Troy’s got a player and they’re this far from each other,” Tyson shows a space with his hands of a foot or so. “Troy’s either visual with hand motions, or just having a conversation, after every training session you walk into the locker room and he’s say beside a guy, having a conversation about something. A lot of people saying ‘this coach is very player-centric,’ and I think that term gets thrown around too much. I think it’s someone who actually spends time with the player, not just letting him get away with stuff. If Troy is getting stuck into somebody at training, he’s not letting that player leave without hearing the player’s position. It’s something I gathered from him early on, you can coach a team or give a message, but you can also coach individual players. And it may not have anything to do with why’s it’s important for that player to make a run behind, maybe it’s a conversation about his family. He’s really special and has the attention and capacity to connect with players on a very personal level.”

Jeffries shares another positive on Lesesne’s character: “Our families are close and we continue to stay in touch. He’s a super family guy and dedicated in those areas.” Along with that, Tyson says, “He was the best man at my wedding, so I’ve known him for a lot of years, so if it comes across as I’m advocating for him, then I definitely am.”

Tyson discusses the off-field side of Lesesne: “He’s a very thoughtful person, I’ve never seen someone be so intentional with remembering birthdays, anniversaries, things like that. He’s got a great sense of humor; part of the reason I think we resonated with one another is we both have a very self deprecating humor. He has an unbelievable ’80s to ’90s move quotes, loves some good alternative rock music. He loves documentaries on, not celebrities, but how the formation of things happen. One that we talk about a lot is Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Garry Shandling and Jerry Seinfeld, how those guys play off each other and how witty they are. He likes a lot of the documentaries on Biggie Smalls and Tupac. I think he’s very intrigued by the psychosocial aspect of things like that.”

As to what D.C. fans will experience when it comes to Lesesne’s presence on and off field? “Great person first of all, just a great character,” Jeffries believes. “A super positive guy, very conscientious, straightforward person. He is super intense, and it shows I think in how you see him during games. He was the assistant with me but it was me holding him down half the time for getting up off the bench and screaming. I think they’ll enjoy his thoughts in terms of how he plays and communicates with both the fan base and with players.”