Jessica Perry out as Estancia High girls soccer coach, athletic director

Jessica Perry has stepped down after seven years as Estancia High girls’ soccer coach, she said Wednesday.

Perry had an emotional meeting with a group of Estancia varsity players on Wednesday morning at incoming junior Katarina Freiberger’s house. She then sent an email to team parents, also informing them of the news.

Perry, who had been the girls’ athletic director and a temporary teacher at Estancia for the last five years, said she was told last week that no teaching job was available for her next school year. She has been teaching human geography, international relations and credit recovery.

Perry said two new co-athletic directors, both of whom are full-time teachers on campus, will take over at Estancia next school year. Estancia boys’ athletic director Tim Parsel is retiring, though he said he will stay on part-time in a transition role.

“Over the last five years they’ve never been able to give me a full schedule,” said Perry, who has a teaching credential in social science and journalism. “The new principal [Michael Halt] didn’t want it to work that way anymore. Ultimately, he said that there was nothing I had done wrong. He just wanted two people who were on-campus full-time [to work as athletic directors].”

Halt is not available for comment as he is out of town this week, Perry and Parsel both said.

Without the teaching and athletic director positions, Perry said she decided to resign as girls’ soccer coach in the best interests of her family. Her son, Benjamin, is one year old. Her husband, Jeff, is a tenured teacher at Estancia and will remain there as the ASB director.

“I’ve applied a few places and got some interviews lined up,” Jessica Perry said. “I love teaching, I love education. I’m not really interested in coaching anywhere else at this time. I feel like my heart wouldn’t be in it ... [but I] would love to become an AD again.”

Estancia’s girls’ soccer program was successful under Perry, winning four Orange Coast League titles, including this past season when the Eagles shared the league crown with Calvary Chapel. Overall, Perry’s teams went 84-44-38 in her seven years in charge, making the CIF playoffs every year.

The 2014-15 team was arguably the best in Perry’s tenure, going 19-4-3 and advancing to the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs before falling at Ontario Colony in overtime. Estancia graduate Alba Barrios, bound for Cal State Fullerton, was Newport-Mesa Player of the Year and teammates Alondra Guzman, Caitlin Leahy and Samantha Falasco also earned Dream Team honors.

“I have had such a great experience at Estancia and I feel at peace with the way I’m leaving the program,” Perry said. “Whoever walks in is going to come into a pretty nice situation ... I’m sad that I didn’t get to decide when it was all going to come to an end, but life goes on and we’ll see what happens next.”

Perry, who grew up in Costa Mesa and played soccer at Mater Dei High and Cal State Dominguez Hills, said she was also proud to be a girls’ athletic director at Estancia. The Eagles have won the All-Sports Cup over rival Costa Mesa all six years that the cup has been in existence.

“Less than 10% of the athletic directors in the state are females,” she said. “I think females in athletics in a leadership role are not as visible, because there’s not that many of us ... it makes me sad that it’s not happening anymore at Estancia.”

Incoming senior Olivia Khoury, a midfielder, said she will miss Perry. Khoury did not attend Wednesday morning’s meeting due to taking senior pictures, but she was quickly filled in by Freiberger and Falasco.

“I’ve had male coaches my whole life,” said Khoury, whose father, Walid, and uncle, Ziad, founded the Newport Beach-based Slammers FC club program. “It was really cool to have a female role model. She was awesome. She taught us so much more than just soccer.”