Owen Finberg is Director of Prep Soccer and Head Coach at The Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, Connecticut, where he leads the full-time, year-round residential prep program delivered in partnership with GESP. He is also president and a co-founder of the Prep Premier League, the national year-round prep league launched in 2023 to put the country’s best programs on the same field. As an Educational Advisor with GESP, he brings families the perspective of someone who has spent more than two decades on the receiving end of the boarding-school placement process — and who knows exactly what college coaches are looking for.

Finberg’s record across twenty-six seasons as a prep head coach is among the best in the country. In nineteen years as Director of Athletics and Head Soccer Coach at South Kent School, his teams won ten New England championships and multiple national titles, posted a 132-6-13 record from 2015 through 2022, and sent every graduating player on to college soccer for fifteen consecutive years — seventy-five of them to NCAA Division I programs in a single decade. Since moving to Woodstock in 2023 his teams have won back-to-back national championships and two Prep Premier League titles, and his 2025 senior class of thirteen all signed with college programs, seven at the Division I level. Eighteen of his former players have gone on to professional careers, including Joshua Bolma, the fourth overall pick in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft.

He was named NSCAA National Coach of the Year in 2015, has been New England Coach of the Year three times, and received the United Soccer Coaches High School Coach of Significance Award in 2018, which recognizes coaches who use their position to teach life lessons. He holds the USSF “A” License and the United Soccer Coaches Premier Diploma, a master’s degree in Athletic Administration from Ohio University, and a bachelor’s degree in Health and Physical Education from Guilford College. He has also coached in the U.S. Soccer Olympic Development Program, led club teams to five Connecticut State Cup championships and a USL Super-20 national final, and taken teams to tournaments in Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Scotland and England.

Finberg chose Woodstock specifically for the chance to build a residential program that trains and competes year-round, combining daily professional-level training, video analysis, strength and conditioning, mindset development and college counseling with a college-preparatory education. His core values for players are development, excellence and class, and the relationships he builds with them tend to last well beyond graduation. As he puts it, big players make big plays in big games — and his job is to prepare young men to be high-level collegiate student-athletes, on the field and off it.