By the time University of Wisconsin men’s soccer head coach Todd Yeagley was four years old, his father Jerry had coached the Indiana Hoosiers to the NCAA soccer final in just their fourth year as a varsity sport. By the time Yeagley joined the Hoosiers as a player in 1991, his father had already amassed over 400 career coaching wins. When Yeagley joined his father as an assistant coach in 2003, he helped Jerry end his career with a national championship.
Now, Jerry Yeagley is the winningest coach in Division I men’s soccer history with 544 career wins and Todd Yeagley is in his first year as UW’s head coach. With his rich past, the younger Yeagley admits he isn’t about to try to fill his father’s shoes.
“Well, if I put that pressure on me, I don’t think I’d sleep very well at night,” Yeagley said. “He’s the winningest coach in college soccer, and I don’t think anyone’s going to catch [his win total]. I’m just lucky that I’ve had him, and still do, as a mentor.”
Yeagley was around soccer from birth, his father being a former NCAA champion with West Chester as a player before building the Indiana program from the ground up as a head coach. Jerry Yeagley had won three national titles before his son took the pitch for the Hoosiers and won three more afterwards.
After Yeagley’s college career, the four-time All American was an inaugural member of Major League Soccer, playing seven years for the Columbus Crew as a defender. That experience as a professional player has already had a profound effect on the UW players, who have known him for less than a year.
“He’s been around a champion his entire life in his dad, who’s won I don’t know how many championships,” UW goalkeeper Alex Horwath said. “It definitely demands respect from the guys. When he speaks, you listen, because he knows what he’s doing. It’s contagious, winning is contagious, and he brings a winning attitude to this program.”
While Yeagley didn’t win an MLS championship with Columbus, the Crew won the 2002 U.S. Open Cup in his last season. He considers himself lucky to have played for one club in his career, as well as the opportunity to play with and pick the brains of fellow players.
“[MLS was] a great experience. I would not trade that, not only the camaraderie, but the timing of the league, being in the founding years,” Yeagley said. “[It was] a wonderful group of players I got to play with, many of them, I’m friends with to this day. Seeing the league grow and prosper, I was in a unique time to be able to compete. The league has gotten so much better and more talent has come through.”
For UW forward Scott Lorenz, having a coach with a long, successful playing career is a definite boon.
“It’s great, because you feel like they can relate to you more. You know, I think you establish a closer relationship with them, and that definitely benefits the team. It benefits you and it benefits the whole program,” Lorenz said.
After retiring in 2002, Yeagley worked as an assistant GM for the crew before volunteering as an assistant coach at Indiana during his father’s final year. Yeagley was hired as an assistant the following season and saw the Hoosiers win a second consecutive championship.
When former UW soccer head coach Jeff Rohrman abruptly resigned following the 2008 season, Yeagley was given his first opportunity to be a head coach when Wisconsin hired him in mid-December. When the Badgers reconvened for spring practices in 2009, Yeagley brought not only a winning pedigree as both a coach and player, but an easy transition between coaching staffs.
“It’s been as smooth as you can possibly expect. Coach came in right from the start and changed the mentality. … The focus has been 10 times better than anything it’s been before,” Horwath said. “Coach [Yeagley] knows the game inside and out, and this is the first time we’ve felt honestly that we’re starting to come together as a team and we learn every day we go to practice. There’s something, whether it’s a little thing or a big thing, we feel like we’re improving every day.”
That improvement will have to continue for Yeagley to reach his goal of making UW a contender on the national scene on a yearly basis. Wisconsin hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since it won the title in 1995. Yeagley considers himself lucky to have both a father who was a huge influence on his coaching, as well as the opportunity to work with players and coaches at the professional level.
“I don’t think I would be as fully prepared to manage and work with a college program after not having that experience,” Yeagley said. “I got to see a lot of very good coaches firsthand, also others in the league and how they operated. I learned more about the game and playing. That was valuable for me.”
Equipped with a history of success both on the pitch and behind the bench, as well as a coaching legend for a father, Yeagley is excited about the challenges involved with building a winning tradition in Wisconsin soccer. As a man who saw himself as a future coach as soon as he finished college, Yeagley is right where he wants to be.
“Coaching is every day uniqueness in what you have to do and every day is a challenge, and that in part makes the job very intriguing,” Yeagley said. “The relationships that you build with your players and your coaches, I love what I do. Not many folks can say that about their job.”
