What are your name and department? Ivan Milicevic, Special Education.

What made you fall in love with soccer? I think if you live in Serbia you kinda have to love it. I was always playing, it was one of the things where you could play everywhere. No real requirements other than a ball, and even that you could improvise. Wherever I was in Serbia, soccer was always around. If you wanted to play with the older guys, you had to get in goal and prove yourself, or fill in wherever you were needed. So, with someone always playing soccer, it was always around. Red Star Belgrade won the Champions League in 1991 when I was 11, and the rest was history.

What is your favorite thing about this school? Community. Sense of community. Everyone seems to be getting along, the Special Education department especially, and how well it’s integrated into the school. I come from a town of around 50,000 in Serbia, and we have about three high schools and five grade schools, and then we have a separate school for students with special needs, where they’re separated from general education students in a separate building. But here, we have Special Education students with general education students in the same school. And we see in special events in the school how well the general students and the special education students integrate and hang out, and that’s lovely. It’s a very special feeling to see how everybody gets along-different ethnicities, different nationalities, and different races, it’s just fantastic.

What’s something not many people know about you? I’m an open book. I was raised in a family where my dad and my uncle were both skydivers, my uncle has got 3,000+ jumps now as a skydiving instructor. When I was 17 years old I got to sneak in my first jump in Chicagoland Skydiving in Hinkley, so having a little bit of a fear of heights I don’t think many people expected me to be skydiving. 

What makes Niles North soccer so special? It’s a tough question. I don’t know how to compare it to anything else. I’ve had one coaching gig outside of this and it was an AYSO volunteer coaching gig so having been a coach here for the last 8-9 years I haven’t been to any other programs but the feeling of familiarity between students and the staff, both current and former, is something that I wouldn’t trade in for anything. Having our graduating students come back to support for big games, small games whenever they’re in town is a fantastic feeling and always brings joy, having younger generations of students coming in after their siblings have been here and seeing how they embrace the values we’ve instilled, it’s a very special feeling. The bond we seem to have between the coaching staff and the students year after year after year just seems to grow stronger and I can’t help but feel proud for having contributed to that in some way. I just feel that the connection between everyone in the program from all levels is just fantastic and I really feel like that’s the main theme.

What’s your favorite memory in this school? I’ve been in the district for almost two years now. It’s gotta be soccer and it’s gotta be last boys’ season’s regional championship. It was our second one, and you know they say you never forget your first but this second one being part of the district and seeing students that I recognize in the hallways outside of the soccer program show up and be supportive and having more of that communal feeling, it was just fantastic to celebrate on the field with the whole student body and our principal and athletic director and administrators, the head of the special education department was there, it was just a special feeling. I would say that.

Who is your role model? You know, I go back to my dad for a lot of things but he passed away fairly early and he was also sick, so while I learned a lot from him and I still draw inspiration from how he lived and the life lessons he taught me, I don’t just have one I have him, I have role models in day to day life now. Coach C and Coach Miha, the way that they interact with students and their families. My uncle, certain aspects of how he approaches studying subjects that are out of his field of expertise, my mom for the strength that she had to be the breadwinner, and after my dad passed single parent to my grandparents who moved to the states with nothing and created a life for themselves here which enabled me to live a good life here and have a second kind of episode of my life. My sister, I find inspiration in her, I find role models all around me. I find different coaches I look up to from coaches around the district and around our conference to professional coaches that I study, and former teammates from how they approach practicing and game time focus. I really try to just absorb a lot from everyone in my life, so even though obviously a father for a boy is his first role model, I’ve really had a lot of them.

Do you have any pets? I have a cat. He’s a shorthaired American mix with a Bombei cat. He’s a black cat named Shoomie.

What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time? Golf. It’s gotta be golf. I picked it up after soccer, it was a way for me to enjoy a competitive activity without exerting as much physical activity with all the old soccer injuries.