Living, breathing, sleeping soccer

Tim Tchoepe

Senior defender Jasmine Odom throws the ball in as head coach Jason Adkins watches during their final game of the Ranger Classic on Jan. 5.

Throughout that span of 16 years, Adkins recently reached a landmark of 250 wins, a feat paralleled only to a handful of other coaches in the San Antonio area. The previous win against Cedar Park made this possible.

“[250 wins] is pretty big,” Adkins said. “Coaches that have those records have been at two or three or four different schools, [so] it’s an accomplishment to do it all at one place. [However], it was really not all about me, it’s about all of those girls that have played before.”

Pondering the career option of coaching sparked the interest of Adkins even as he was a soccer player himself.

“[I] graduated high school, went to college, [and] played soccer my freshman year of college,” Adkins said. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but as soon as I hit my sophomore year, I knew I wanted to be a coach.”

Standing, directing and shouting on the sidelines for more than a decade as a head coach presented a jarring difference compared to Adkins’s days as a player sprinting down the fields.

“I tell my players this all time: it’s harder to be a coach than it is a player,” Adkins said. “You take those wins and you take those loses a little bit harder because you can’t control everything. As a coach you can only control certain things, so it’s a bit stressful being [one], but I wouldn’t pass it up.”

Continuing to build on the stream of success prioritized itself in Adkins even as his 250th win sank in.

“We’ve made the playoffs sixteen out of my seventeen years. We’ve won district eight times out of that stretch as well, [and] we’ve never finished lower than second in the last ten years at district, so it’s longevity,” Adkins said. “And that’s what you want as a coach. You want to be able to be successful year in and year out, not just once in a while.”

Every day, Adkins dribbles the task of not only coaching, but also teaching World History. While both may seem worlds apart, he finds a way to incorporate one with the other.

“As a coach you got to make relationships with kids, with students and players,” Adkins said. “The same thing in the classroom, you got to make relationships with them, so when can you joke with them, when can you play with them, when do you know when there’s something going on in their lives and they’re kinda down and you talk to them about it. You use those strategies in the classroom as well as on the field.”

Even through all of the exhilaration that coincides with a typical, successful season of soccer, Adkins reflects on the one thing that touches him most of all about being a coach.

“Once again, it’s the girls. Seeing [them] graduate, go to college, play in college,” Adkins said. “I’m now going to former players’ weddings. Seeing them get married, seeing some of my former players having children of their own, that’s more inspirational and what [coaching is] more about than the games themselves.”