Sasha Rudenko, Staff Writer
First appeared in print September 1, 2014.
A four-year old boy notices that he is in a sport-loving family. His dad’s passion is directed towards American favorites baseball and basketball. The boy, however, falls in love with the European favorite pastime: soccer. The boy grows up living and breathing soccer. His passion eventually grows into a profession and has since become the head coach of UVU womens soccer team.
This is Brent Anderson, a man who went through a long way of coaching and business professions related with soccer to eventually spend eight years at his head coach position at UVU.
When answering the question “what do you like most about soccer and your job?” Anderson immediately replies: “Team aspect. It is all about developing the team mentality.” He explains that the game is very team oriented. They have to work altogether to achieve goals and to do that they develop their team culture.
“Brent Anderson makes it challenging for us,” says Kasandra Anderson, one of his captains.
“He makes every game intense and competitive,” adds his other captain, Lexi Robinson. “He brings [out] our best in ourselves. He is not only our soccer coach; he also cares about us off the field.”
Every coach attempts to create a team mentality in his or her own way. Anderson receives praise as he succeeds with example and encouragement.
“He is really involved,” said Kasandra Anderson. “He is part of everything, he is an example.”
“He makes us a team by making it a priority,” said Robinson. “It’s team before self-attitude. You have to do your best to make a player next to you look great”.
Anderson, however, says that his secret is respect for others. Respect between members brings everyone together and makes them a good team.
As he prepares for the coming season, Anderson does not concern about the incoming games but aims to “hit the performance level” and expects his team to play “good consistent soccer.”
“I love the game, it’s fun to watch and fun to coach,” said Anderson, with laughter and positivity in his voice.
He adds that with coaching, it is his goal for a team to be technical but working on the mechanical side of soccer is almost fun when you love the game from standpoints of watching, coaching, and even talking about it.
Anderson is lucky to have five more amazing soccer lovers around him at home. His wife and four children are all involved with sports and all like to play soccer.
Their family free time is full of sporting activities and their children do not have to come to him begging for permission to go longboarding because Anderson is always happy to come join the fun himself.
Longboarding, skiing, snowboarding are all on the list of Anderson’s family activities. All of the family supports each other at sporting events because they care about and are interested in each others success.
So how do you become a soccer head coach at a university? Sometimes you start when you are four.
