THE MAN ON AND OFF THE PITCH

The women’s soccer team’s season is over after losing to the Penn State Nittany Lions in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. One of the people behind the team’s success is Head Coach Matt Fannon. Fannon was able to lead the team to a season full of accomplishments, including being the regular season MAC Champions, as well as winning the MAC Tournament against Ball State. The team only lost one match in the MAC all season.

This past season was Fannon’s second season as Head Coach for the Falcons, and alongside all of the accomplishments this season, he also led the team to the MAC Tournament finals last season in his first year as the coach. However, the Falcons ended up losing that game.

Fannon’s journey to the city of Bowling Green is one with many stops. He was born in the city of York, in England, and lived there until he was 18. He then moved to the United States to coach soccer camps. Fannon coached for a couple years but eventually he was “desperate to go back to college and play.”

“So I spent a semester at a community college in New York, just so I could be spotted basically,” he said.

Fannon visited Davis and Elkins College, which is located in West Virginia, and the coach there offered him a full scholarship, leading to his decision to attend the school. After his two years there, he moved to Denver to coach soccer camps again.

In Denver, Fannon found what he wanted to do. He was a volunteer assistant, with the men’s program at Regis University, which is a Division II men’s program in Colorado, just by Denver, “just to get my foot in the door,” he said.

A typical day in Colorado for Fannon looked like:

5 a.m.: Wake up
7 a.m.: Arrive at training sessions
8:30 a.m.: Drive to day job
5 p.m.: Start coaching job
8:30 p.m.: Arrive home

Fannon spent a lot of time working on coaching, which paid off when he got his first full-time coaching job with the University of Wyoming as an assistant coach. He was with the team for 18 months.

Then his first daughter was born. Since Fannon and his wife Julie wanted to be closer to her family in Cleveland, he applied for a coaching job at the University of Wittenberg, which he later took.

“We really loved the town, the university, the people,” he said. “I made a lot of good friends while I was coaching there. When I got the job here, we were really sad to leave, we really were, but you can’t turn down an opportunity like BG.”

Lately, he said he has been watching a lot of women’s soccer, also talking about how far it has come over the years. He said women’s soccer, and women’s sports in general, have come a long way since his time in school.

“One of the most interesting parts is that when I grew up, I remember when I was in junior school as we call it, middle school I suppose, there was one girl. One girl in the school that played soccer and she only played it for the first couple of years,” he said. “And I remember after the first couple of years of secondary school, which is basically when you hit 12, 13, there were just no girls at all at my school at all who played any sports, let alone soccer.”

Fannon said many more women play now in England. Women’s soccer is the second-largest sport there behind men’s soccer. He talked about how there were a few girls teams and a few girls on the boys team, but that was about it. He has seen the difference in his time in the United States.

“The opportunity that females have to play sport, and the way they’re encouraged to do so, it wasn’t that way when I was growing up in England, so that’s probably the biggest difference,” Fannon said.

Fannon’s long road to his stop at the University as head coach of the women’s soccer team. His success at the University in the short time he has been here has shown his work to get here was not in vain.