This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Florida State women’s soccer team. With the guidance of a man who cut his coaching teeth in Maine, it turned into a dream season.
Mark Krikorian didn’t know what to expect when he took the task of rebuilding the Seminoles last January. He didn’t know any of the players who had stayed or were joining the program, or even who would be his assistant coaches.
But he didn’t go into the job completely blind. A coaching career that had spanned two decades, won him a pair of national championships, and taken him from Salem and Farmington, Maine to Philadelphia and Thailand had given him the experience and confidence that he could take the talent he had and make a smooth transition into what is widely considered the toughest conference in women’s college soccer.
It was a smooth transition, to say the least. The Seminoles went all the way to the College Cup, the NCAA Women’s Final Four.
A Derry, N.H. native, Krikorian starred in soccer and graduated with a degree in history from St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., in 1983. He was an All-Star in the New England Indoor Soccer League, but after teaching and coaching in his home state for a couple of years, he moved to Salem to take a job as a social studies teacher at Mt. Abram High School in 1985. There he worked as an assistant to Art Potter for the boys’ soccer team before becoming an assistant for Bob Leib with the University of Maine at Farmington’s men’s team.
Krikorian’s first taste of college coaching turned out to be among the most invaluable. UMF is not, and never was, a place that attracts the top soccer talent in the Northeast. But the young coach learned quickly from Leib how to make the best of a less than ideal situation.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a coach who got more out of the talent he had to work with than Bob Leib,” Krikorian said during a phone interview this week. “It was a great experience working with him.”
Krikorian developed his natural eye for talent at Farmington and other stops to come. He is now hailed as one of the top recruiters in college soccer, tirelessly working North America and around the world to find the best soccer players.
“He’s a very high-level recruiter,” said Leib, who has coached over 30 years at Farmington and still keeps in contact with Krikorian. “His contacts get good players for him.”
He got his first head coaching job in 1990, overseeing the women’s soccer program at Franklin Pierce College. In 1994, he led the Ravens to a perfect 19-0 season and their first national title. He topped that the following year with a 20-0 record and another championship.
Krikorian’s recruiting skills helped Franklin Pierce win two more national titles. But he moved on to the University of Hartford, where he was busy building the Division I program into another national power. In five years at Hartford, he went 75-30-3 and led it to four consecutive NCAA tournament appearances.
In 11 years of college coaching, Krikorian captured 168 wins and nine Coach of the Year awards, so when the Philadelphia Charge of the newly-formed WUSA women’s professional soccer league needed a head coach in 2000, Krikorian was a natural choice. The Charge went 27-19-19 and made two playoff appearances under his watch and he was the league’s Coach of the Year in 2002, but the WUSA folded after just three years of existence.
“It was fantastic (coaching in the WUSA). I look back to that as a real positive. We had many of the best women’s players in the world,” Krikorian said. “I feel terrible the WUSA isn’t around anymore. It gave women the opportunity to compete as professional athletes, and they don’t have that anymore here.”
His pro and college credentials quickly opened another door to Krikorian. He was named head coach of the Under-19 National Team, a title that made him responsible for all technical aspects of the program.
The team cruised through Group C play of the 2004 U-19 Women’s World Cup before bowing to eventual champion Germany in the semifinals in Thailand. They then beat Brazil for the bronze medal.
“That was a great experience because I like being a scientist in a laboratory,” he said. “One day you’re preparing for South Korea, the next day for Russia and the next day for Spain and then Germany. It was something I thoroughly enjoyed.”
When he took the job at Florida St., Krikorian figured it might take him at least a year to reach the level of success he’d been accustomed to at the collegiate level. Only four of 11 starters were returning, and two of the team’s best players had transferred. The Noles were picked to finish sixth in the ACC preseason coaches poll, but the players quickly bought in to his possession style of play that emphasizes technique and precision passing.
“We had a very open-minded group of returning players, and we were able to bring in some very good players,” Krikorian said.
The Seminoles lost just three times in the regular season, then knocked Florida Atlantic, Illinois and California out of the NCAA tournament before meeting up with North Carolina in the quarterfinals in Chapel Hill.
The Tar Heels are the dynasty of the women’s college soccer, having won 17 national titles since 1982. But the Seminoles upset the Heels on penalty kicks and earned their second Final Four appearance in three years.
UCLA ended FSU’s dream season with a 4-0 shutout in the national semifinals last weekend. Krikorian didn’t spend much time dwelling on it before looking forward to next season, when he expects a tournament-tested nucleus to team up with a strong recruiting class and make the Noles even stronger.
“It’s been a relatively successful first season, but the goal when I got here was to win the national championship, and that goal still stands,” he said.
Leib doesn’t doubt his former protg will deliver.
“Look at what he’s done down there already,” Leib said. “He has to take high-level talent and make them fit into the team, which isn’t that easy.”
About as easy as getting back to Maine to visit old friends, but Krikorian still maintains ties to Maine. His family, wife Linda and two young children, have a place in Monmouth and still venture up once a year to visit old acquaintances such as Leib, Jay athletic director Kenric Charles and Brunswick varsity boys’ soccer coach Peter Gardner.
Returning to his coaching roots reminds Krikorian of his time as a wide-eyed coaching neophyte who had little idea what awaited him beyond the mountains of western Maine.
“Even as a player, I knew that coaching was a part of my being and an interest for me,” he said. ” But I didn’t know the full scope of the possibilities that were out there.”
It’s safe to say he knows now.
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