COACH OF THE YEAR: John Kerr

Reclining in a swivel chair with one foot propped comfortably up on a desk, John Kerr thumbs through a pamphlet on next fall’s Diadora Classic tournament, hosted by the University of San Francisco. Kerr, who begins his fourth year as Harvard’s men’s soccer coach this month, has his team scheduled to compete in the tourney next fall.

The competition will be stiff. Besides San Francisco, the tournament field also includes Santa Clara, which played in the national championship game as recently as 1999. But that doesn’t keep Harvard from being utterly convinced that it can win the whole thing. On the heels of a breakthrough 2001 season, Kerr has the men’s soccer program sitting pretty.

In any other year, Kerr’s team might have been the biggest story of the fall. After languishing under .500 the previous two seasons, this year’s Crimson team made its first trip to NCAAs since 1996. Much of the success was overshadowed by the football team’s dream season, but it put Harvard back on the road to national renown. That, Kerr says, was his reason for taking the job in the first place.

“I wanted to bring back the glory days of Harvard soccer,” he says matter-of-factly.

Kerr has only been affiliated with Harvard for three years, but he has a better idea than most about what those days were like. Kerr was a senior at Duke when the Crimson advanced all the way to the Final Four in 1986. The Blue Devils won the NCAA title that year, as Kerr, who also claimed men’s college Player of the Year honors, had two goals and an assist in Duke’s 3-2 win over the Crimson in the national semifinals.

After college, Kerr spent time playing professionally in Europe, as well as in the United States. After the Major Indoor Soccer League folded in 1992, Kerr joined the coaching staff at Duke as the top assistant to his former mentor, John Rennie. Kerr signed on on a trial basis, committing only to the first six weeks of the season. But he ended up loving it so much, he stayed the whole season. After that, Kerr—whose father coached him during his teens—had the coaching bug in his system for good.

Following stints with Major League Soccer’s Dallas Burn and New England Revolution, and then a tour of duty with the Boston Bulldogs of the professional A-League, Kerr came to Harvard in the summer of 1999. At the time, his wife Tracy, now the head women’s soccer coach at Providence College, was an assistant with the Harvard women’s team. Kerr brought with him a new coaching philosophy and a new style. But the players weren’t the only ones who had to adjust.

“He had to adjust to us as well,” says captain Nick Lenicheck. “The athletic and academic environment at Harvard, and the Ivy League in general, is a lot different than at a place like Duke or Stanford. Coming to Harvard, where athletics are not professionalized at all, had to be difficult. The atmosphere is totally different.”

While Harvard’s culture of amateur athletics might have been new to Kerr, it hasn’t prevented him from instilling a professional approach and attaching a seriousness to the program.

For one thing, Kerr has made a point of seeking out players who are not just part-time soccer enthusiasts. Academics should always be a Harvard student’s top focus, Kerr says, but he wants players who are willing to make soccer their next-biggest priority. That means training religiously year-round.

“Coach has told us that the will to win is the will to train,” Lenicheck says. “To win, you have to train harder and more intelligently than everyone else.”

Then there is the matter of Kerr’s practices. Kerr calls them “competitive”; Lenicheck calls them “long and grueling.” They start out innocently enough, as Kerr and his staff are fond of cracking a couple jokes to loosen up the team. But by the end of the session, the players are usually divided into two teams for an intrasquad scrimmage. In a twist he gleaned from his old professional coach in England, Kerr always makes sure “there’s a reward for the loser,” usually in the form of some strenuous physical punishment.

“That may sound harsh, and I admit I’ve sworn at him under my breath many times, but it really instills a will to win, a hatred for losing,” Lenicheck says. “It makes playing games much easier.”

The game did seem to come easy to Harvard during stretches last season. At one point, the Crimson posted a string of six shutouts, matching a school record from 1969 and lifting Harvard to a No. 17 national ranking.

Still, not even the best of defenses could have helped the Crimson if it didn’t start scoring more goals. Kerr took steps to combat the offensive dry spell that victimized the Crimson in 2000, when Harvard had just 19 tallies in 17 games. Beginning in the spring of 2001, the team started practicing with a new 4-3-3 alignment that added an extra player up front. Athletic sophomore Ladd Fritz, the team’s top returning scorer, was moved from midfielder to forward.

“He is always thinking,” Fritz says of Kerr. “Our new formation this season was one reason that we were so successful.”

Halfway through the year, Kerr reverted back to the old 4-4-2 scheme. The Crimson’s ability to switch back and forth between the two formations added an element of unpredictability that made Harvard hard to scout.

All the success has created a mirth and camaraderie among the players that was absent in previous years. Kerr notes with pride that many of his players hang out together off the field and a good number of them are blocking together next year.

“You try to create an atmosphere where everyone cares about Harvard soccer and that helps form a tight-knit group,” Kerr says.

The environment has eliminated the selfish style of play that poisoned past seasons.

“For me, the biggest difference this fall was the team unity,” Lenicheck says. “In the past, we had the talent but not the desire to play for each other. When things went poorly, people started pointing fingers and blaming each other. This year everyone got along. There was a collective responsibility—we won and lost as a team. We stuck together, even in the difficult times.”

At the same time Kerr has striven to create a fun atmosphere, his no-nonsense approach has kept the team disciplined. When senior goalie Dan Mejias had a verbal confrontation with Kerr on the team’s trip to San Diego last September, he was suspended for three games and his job was put up for grabs.

“I had to make a stand on behalf of the team,” Kerr says, noting a similar situation that made news last week when Irish National Team manager Mick McCarthy sent Irish star Roy Keane packing after Keane lashed out at him. “No individual is bigger than the team. That goes for the coaching staff as well.”

With Mejias out, Kerr deployed a rookie, Jamie Roth, at the keeper position. Before succumbing to an injury that landed Mejias back in the starter’s role, Roth impressed during the team’s shutout streak, joining forward Jeremy Truntzer and back Jason Andersen as one of Harvard’s impact freshmen.

Their positive contributions were just the latest fruits reaped by Kerr and Assistant Coach Gary Crompton’s stellar recruiting efforts. In their short time at Harvard, they have been able to attract some of the country’s top high school athletes. Fritz, one of the staff’s great finds, says he was won over by Kerr’s refreshing honesty.

“Coach Kerr was always genuine during the recruiting process,” Fritz says. “He informed me of what Harvard had to offer, but did not force anything upon me. He always said I should make the decision that is best for me, and he hoped that Harvard would be that decision, but if it wasn’t, then in the long run that would be better for myself.”

More reinforcements are on the way, as Harvard will welcome six freshmen next fall. Kerr is finding that as the Crimson continues to improve, he’s been able to get more and more selective when it comes to recruits. Fritz believes Harvard is becoming an easy sell.

“Ultimately, Kerr hopes to bring a national championship to this program, which is not an unrealistic goal,” he says.

For all the progress Harvard has made, it’s still a long road to a national championship game. Still, if Fritz is any indication, the players have bought into the system. Kerr, it seems, has half the battle already won.