GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
Pepperdine women’s soccer Head Coach Tim Ward is one of the youngest head coaches at the university. His eight-year tenure has taken the Waves from a team struggling to reach .500 to a program that competes for the West Coast Conference title and in the national tournament year in and year out. He’s also a husband and father of two as well as a talented musician.
How have you brought Pepperdine into national prominence in just eight years?
It’s funny you ask that I was looking last night at some old notes, what our goals were for our program. When I first got the head coaching job, it was more about building a program that was known for its integrity and character and respect the players have for one another and the coaching staff, and honesty, all those kinds of values and principles that Pepperdine is basically built upon. Don’t get me wrong, I love to win. I’m really competitive, but I’m not afraid to lose. And I think if we focus on doing the right things, the winning takes care of itself. We’ve been able to attract great student athletes here. Clive Charles, who’s one of my coaching heroes, he was at the University of Portland and past away from cancer a few years ago said, ‘You can’t win the Kentucky Derby without thoroughbreds.’ So the reality is we have some very good soccer players here.
What is the key to successful recruiting for you?
I have a new assistant coach, and when I say new I mean she’s been with me for the last two years. She’s done a phenomenal job, Twila Kaufman is her name. We just get out there. We’re fortunate that we’re in the hotbed of soccer recruits in the country. Southern California arguably has some of the best players in the country. We’ve been able to tap into that market and keep kids who want to stay close to home. Play their college soccer close to friends and family. That’s made up the majority of our recruiting classes the past few years.
What do you think this incoming recruiting class can do for the program?
I think they’re going to be fantastic I think we have a great nucleus of girls returning. Obviously we lost a real talented senior class. Actually, every year it seems to be that way with who we have in here. The kids we have coming I think are very, very talented. It’s a really competitive class. Last year, Ashley Copp was probably the only freshman who came in and started every game for us.
She was fantastic, obviously, with the run we had and the experience she got. I think a couple of the freshmen coming in can vie for starting minutes from the get go. So it’ll be interesting, really interesting.
How were you able to make the transition from high school coaching to college coaching so smoothly?
I played at Agoura High School, which is literally right over the hill. Then I went to Cal Lutheran, which is right over the hill. Then I came here. During all that time I was coaching. There are some rules that prevent all our current student athletes at a Division I school from coaching. What happened for me was while I was playing my latter part of my high school career, I actually started coaching club soccer. Then all through college I coached not only club but high school, and I coached summer camps. So I was coaching all throughout that time. I didn’t think I was going to be a full-time coach. I was going to be a physical therapist. I was a biology major. It just so happened that right when I graduated from Cal Lutheran, George Koontz, who started the Pepperdine program and was my coach at Cal Lutheran, called me saying ‘I need an assistant.’ I just happened to be a young guy who didn’t need a lot of money because I could live on peanuts. I came over and I’ve been here ever since.
How are you able to mix family life with coaching life?
I always tell our current players and our recruits that the two most important things in my life are my faith and my family. I’ve got to be honest, it’s tough because the coaching life is so hectic. The common question I get is, ‘Is that all you do? Coaching?’ But it never ends. The recruiting never ends. It’s an all-year event. Every weekend, if you really want to you could probably be out there recruiting. There are so many players interested in your program. I sort of had to draw the line at a certain point. I always feel that the legacy I can leave is the fact that I’m a good husband and good father. The soccer’s the easy part. I feel pretty confident that the girls are going to get better in our program. The fact that they see that I’m committed to my family and my wife and my faith, that’s really what’s important to me.
Tell me a little bit about the band you’re in, Your Moose.
The Moose is extinct in a way. We haven’t performed in a few years. But, what’s happening is, me and a buddy write music. We’re going to start to play live shows again. With soccer, it makes it more difficult to balance the two. When I was younger, I had more energy so I could coach all day and then go do gigs at night all around Southern California when I had the family, the kids, my music sort of went on hold. Having said that, it’s really a passion of mine. My grandfather was a musician, it was his profession. So it’s sort of in the family genes. My goal is just to sell a lot of the songs I’ve written. We’ll do that. We’ll be playing at the sideline, the Christian-athlete Bible study thing they do on campus. It should be pretty cool.
How long have you been playing?
Since I was in ninth grade. I learned to play the guitar so I could impress all the girls, you know how it is. But then I broke my finger and my dreams of being Eddie Van Halen sort of subsided. I realized I could actually write some songs. My soloing days went by the wayside, but then singing sort of became the focus.
03-30-2006
