Kit Vela has seen — and done — a lot in the world of women’s soccer.
She played for strong teams at Brown University during the late 1980s and helped build up programs such as Loyola Marymount University and the University of Southern California during the 1990s. She has seen women’s college soccer go from a small group of about 90 teams nationwide to more than 200 programs now. She saw women who had never played the sport of soccer pack the Rose Bowl for the 2000 Women’s World Cup.
Now, as head coach of the UNM women’s soccer team, she wants to rebuild yet another program and generate more community interest for soccer.
“They’re (the players) are going to see hard work,” Vela said. “These kids are going to play hard from minute one to minute 90, or 120 if that’s what we got to do.”
Vela comes in with a rÇsumÇ that shows she knows what it takes to win.
As a player at Brown, Vela was a part of teams that made three NCAA tournament appearances, captured four Ivy League titles and was nationally ranked in the top 12 in the country throughout her career. She still plays and won the women’s open national championship with Sportsklubben Fram Ajax, a club team in Palos Verdes, Calif., of the Women’s Semi-Professional Soccer League in July of 1998.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
As an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount in 1994 and 1995, she, her husband Jorge, now the UNM assistant coach and current USC head coach Jim Millinder nursed an infant Lions program that started in 1993 and is now a power in the West Coast Conference. At USC, the trio took over in 1996 and created what Vela calls a “a top-10, top-15 program.”
Her only stint as head coach was just as successful: she coached her alma mater Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, Calif. from 1992-1994 and led the school to three Mission League championships and a California Interscholastic Federation Division II title in 1994.
Millinder said Kit and Jorge epitomize the term “player’s coach.”
“They’ve got a good rapport with the players,” Millinder said. “They’ve got a passion for the game. The whole idea is they want to take that passion and put it in their players.”
That passion plus hard work are the ingredients Vela says can turn the Lobos around. One of the first things she said she had to do was change the attitude of the program.
“They enjoy working out,” Velas said. “They like it. There’s something to be said about it. They changed already 100 percent from where we were in January.”
Another trend Vela wants to change is losing some of the New Mexico’s players — such as Amy Warner, a La Cueva High School (Albuquerque) graduate who now plays for the University of Notre Dame — to out of state schools.
“I have talked to maybe one New Mexican who doesn’t like it here,” Vela said. “All the other ones are saying, ‘God I would love to stay here if there was a reason.’ They’re very family oriented. They want their family and friends to watch them play. They want to succeed in front of them.
“They want to stay, but now you have to give them a reason to. They have to get to know people like us and trust us.”
One advantage for Vela is that she feels the program is not in terrible shape. She said the nucleus of the team is better than when she started at USC, comparing the Lobos to USC’s team in Millinder’s second year.
“We’re back down to the middle,” Vela said of the rebuilding process. “We’re not where we were at USC. We have a good nucleus.”
It’s a far cry from Vela’s time at Loyola Marymount, where she, her husband and Millinder started from scratch. The record during Millinder’s tenure was only 8-27-4, but his squads were competitive. The Broncos managed to defeat three top-25 teams, including a Santa Clara University team that was ranked eighth in the nation, and 15 of the 27 losses were only by one goal.
That performance helped Millinder land a job at USC, and he brought Kit and Jorge with him. Millinder said he could see the difference between the programs immediately.
“Kit and I got players on track and we said, ‘Oh my god, the quality of player was night and day.’” Millinder said. “We didn’t have a lot of athletes (at LMU). I think we had to encourage the girls as much as we could to play hard and set their goals high and squeeze every little bit out of them.”
The Trojans quickly became one of the top teams in the PAC-10 Conference and in the nation. From 1996-2001, USC has a 73-27-4 record, with a conference championship in 1998 and three straight appearances in the NCAA Tournament since 1998.
Millinder said Kit learned to do just about everything involved with the program during their time together, such as dealing with the program’s budget and recruiting to scheduling.
Millinder said he has no doubts that Vela will succeed at UNM.
“She’s been through a lot and knows what it takes to be successful,” Millinder said. “They know how to build UNM to an NCAA Tournament team. It’s just like anything else. Just roll up your sleeves and go to work.”
Vela said she and her husband’s experience can be an invaluable asset to the players.
“We’ve been around for a long time,” Vela said. “We played at a high level. We can bring that to the kids. We coached at a high level and we can bring that to the kids. We’re feeding from a lot of different sources. And that’s what’s going to help this program.”
