In 2001, a 16-year old from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio took one of the biggest stages in women’s soccer at the Algarve Cup in Portugal as part of the United States National Team. Twelve years have brought on a great deal of changes for Kristen Weiss – the teenager from 2001 – but she still holds a strong relationship with the game she grew up playing, it’s just a different kind of relationship.

After playing on many of the youth national teams, including the full national team for that 2001 Algarve Cup, Weiss has transferred her love of the game from playing into coaching, and in March of this year joined the Wisconsin women’s soccer coaching staff as an assistant.

“One of the biggest things is that as a coach you should always bring people who are smarter and better than you in certain areas and I think the attacking stuff, she’s better,” head coach Paula Wilkins said of her decision to add Weiss, who was an attacking player all throughout her playing career.

Weiss was an assistant last season with UW-Milwaukee, which brought her and Wilkins in closer contact, but interestingly enough, Wilkins has known about Weiss for a lot longer than a year. In fact, back when Wilkins coached at Penn State she had actually tried to recruit Weiss to come play for her.

Wilkins had limited contact with Weiss in trying to recruit her — one phone call, according to Wilkins — and Weiss ultimately decided to take her talent to Virginia and become a Cavalier. Still, with Weiss being one  of the players she had recruited, Wilkins kept tabs on her during her collegiate career at Virginia.

For Weiss, her career at Virginia, after playing on the U16 youth national team all the way up to the full national team, didn’t exactly turn out as she had hoped. Only a handful of games into her freshman season, Weiss tore her ACL and was forced to sit out the rest of the season. Even with the injury, Weiss came back quickly and was ready to go in time to play on a summer club team. Unfortunately for Weiss, disaster struck once again during that season as she tore the same ACL forcing her to sit out her entire sophomore year, though she did receive a medical redshirt.

During her third season, Weiss managed to avoid the injury bug that had already caused her so much devastation in only two years at the college level and played the entire season.

But luck was not on her side as only a few games into what was her senior season, she tore her other ACL. She came back for a fifth season, but three ACL tears were too many as, according to Weiss, she no longer felt like the player she once was. Although she could have had a sixth season of eligibility, Weiss decided to hang up her cleats for good and leave the game on her own terms.

Despite leaving the game as a player, Weiss was hardly done with the game of soccer as she immediately got into coaching the season after finishing her playing career.

After assistant coaching roles at Clemson, Maryland and UWM, Weiss was hired by Wilkins to replace Carmelina Moscato, who left Wisconsin to continue her playing career with the Chicago Red Stars and Canadian National team.

“She’s an accomplished young coach as I’ve seen in a long time,” Wilkins said of Weiss. “I think she has a great balance because I think when you’re younger it’s harder to have a balance because you want to get to know them and communicate with them but also have a balance of professionalism.”

Not only does she have that balance, but with her vast experience as an attacker, and at a high level, Weiss brings a great deal of knowledge to her position — she works specifically with forwards and attackers — which is made obvious to players like Marisa Kresge.

“She is very knowledgeable. Like when we do video, we always break it down and she can tell you basically anything. It’s very helpful everything that she knows. She’s just very knowledgeable of the game, whether it’s movement off the ball or technically, what you should be doing,” said Kresge, who actually played under Weiss at Maryland before she transferred to Wisconsin.

Considering all of her playing days were spent attacking, from a coaching standpoint Weiss stated her philosophy is more centered on that part of play.

“I was an attacking player, so I see the game from an attacking side very much, so I like a team that can possess the ball really well, who looks to attack,” Weiss said. “I like the exciting part of the game, just the possession and moving the ball well. I like to see a lot of creativity on the field, so I think when you have special players, they obviously have something special in their game and that’s very attractive – players who can do something, whether it’s free kicks or being great in the air or their speed or whatever it is.”

According to Weiss, in just her first few months as part of the Badgers’ coaching staff she has enjoyed her time immensely, bonding with players and more importantly her fellow coaches Wilkins and assistant Tim Rosenfeld. Wilkins and Rosenfeld have been together for quite a long time, dating back to Wilkins time as a head coach at Penn State, which has allowed Weiss the opportunity to learn from coaches who have been around college soccer for some time.

With already one assistant that has been with her for 13 years, Wilkins hopes that Weiss is next in line as a long-tenured assistant coach.

“I would like her to be here for a while. I think she’s very good for the program and I like consistency,” Wilkins said.

Weiss noted that she wants to become a head coach at some point in time, but doesn’t really when or where, so for now, Wilkins will just have to be stuck with what she referred to as one of the better up-and-coming coaches in the game.

“I’m not really sure at what level or when that will be,” Weiss said of a possible head coaching career. “I know right now I’m pretty happy here and I plan to be here for quite a while, as long as Paula keeps me.”