Lifelong Mineola resident Dolores Jose, soccer player, coach and director, dies at 73

Dolores Jose loved soccer, absolutely loved it.

The lifelong Mineola resident played it into her 60s, coached it into her 70s and was involved with the administration of it almost until the day she died.

That was Jan. 5, when she lost her fight with cancer at the age of 73.

Her daughter, Ann Marie Bria, said soccer meant “everything” to Jose. She touched so many Long Island lives as a coach and proponent of the sport. And all of her work was as a volunteer.

People have come up to Bria since Jose’s passing, people she didn’t even know, offering praise such as: “Your mother coached me when I was little  ...  She had such a profound impact on my life.”

“She had such a reach,” Bria said. “It’s been so overwhelming.”

Jose graduated from Mineola High School in 1968.  She didn’t formally begin playing until 1978, when she joined the East Meadow Wings, a Long Island Ladies Soccer League team that Noel Stazko had recently formed. Jose was a goalkeeper and a midfielder and kept playing with East Meadow until about 10 years ago. She had served as its coach/manager since then.

She served on the league’s board of directors for more than 40 years.

Jose also was on the Mineola Athletic Association’s board and coached girls and boys youth soccer for about 40 years.

“She literally coached thousands and thousands of kids,” said Stazko, a close friend and longtime Wings teammate. “No matter where we went, we would run into one of her former players: ‘Oh, coach Dolores, thank you so much. You make the game so much better.’ ”

Additionally, Jose was a supervisor, coordinator and director with the Long Island Junior Soccer League games committee for more than three decades. She was inducted into the league's Hall of Fame in 2013.

“I don’t think there’s a single person that can say they did more to promote youth soccer on Long Island than Dolores Jose,” Stazko said.

Jose’s father, John Pereira, was a Mineola Portuguese Soccer Club founder and made the Long Island Soccer Football League Hall of Fame.

Her husband, Ilidio Jose, helped start the Jamaica Portuguese Soccer Club. Their children, Ann Marie and David, became soccer players. Jose coached both for a time.

“Sunday mornings ... the entire house was going to every single different soccer game,” Bria said. “We missed everything. We missed birthday parties. It didn’t matter. If it was happening on Sunday, soccer came first.”

Bria played for Mineola High School. Then mother and daughter became teammates.

“The East Meadow Wings is in a 26-and-over division ...  and as soon as I turned 26, I joined the team along with a bunch of my friends that I played soccer with,” Bria said. “So I played alongside of her for [about] 15 years.”

Stazko called Jose the “funniest person you’d ever want to meet.”

Bria called her “a people person.”

Jose is survived by her husband, her two children and four grandchildren.

Toward the end of her life, few knew Jose was ill.

“She didn’t want to worry anybody,” Stazko said.

Jose was still working with the various organizations, including as the Mineola Athletic Association team registration coordinator, until about a week before she died.

“Three weeks before she passed away, she was getting so weak and she’s making sure — ‘We’ve got to get the registrations in. We’ve got to do this,’ ” Stazko said. “She was leaving notes for everybody what to do, knowing she wasn’t going to be there.

“Amazing person.” 

Services were conducted Jan. 9 at Queen of Peace Cemetery in Old Westbury.