Dennis Erickson is not the only new face leading an ASU team this fall.
Kevin Boyd is about to begin his first season as the head coach of the ASU soccer team and hopes to build the program into a contender both in the Pac-10 and on the national level year in and year out.
Boyd was hired as the third head coach in the history of the program last March and has already made an impact.
"I've learned so much from Kevin in just the short period of time that he's been here," senior forward Courtney Crane said. "He brings a lot to the table and he has a lot of knowledge of the game."
The Sun Devils are getting a proven winner in Boyd as he enjoyed a very successful tenure at Pac-10 rival California prior to arriving in Tempe.
With the Golden Bears, Boyd posted a record of 124-63-20 and made the NCAA tournament eight times in 10 seasons. He was also named the Pac-10 Coach of the Year in 2005 and has the second-highest winning percentage of any coach in the conference.
"Arizona State gets the benefit of someone who's been learning lessons for 11 years and getting better every year," Boyd said.
After the 2006 season, Boyd decided he needed a change of scenery and that it was time to leave Berkeley.
"Initially there were a lot of personal reasons making me want to leave where I was," Boyd said. "A lot of that was developed with having a new family, economics and also just comfort of life and quality of living, and I couldn't have achieved that where I was so I knew I needed to make a change.
"I felt like I got extremely lucky that Arizona State was open at the time."
Boyd has always been interested in the ASU job, as he applied for the position all three times it was open before finally being hired in March.
"The first time [I applied] I wasn't qualified in any way," Boyd said. "The second time I got interviewed in a phone interview and I was terrible . . . and then this time I felt pretty comfortable and I knew that my accomplishments would stand on their own and I was fortunate enough to get the job."
Boyd was always impressed with what ASU had to offer as a university and as an athletic program while he was an opposing coach at Cal, and his opinion has only grown since arriving.
"I hadn't seen as much [of the program] as an opponent, and I didn't know about the enthusiasm and the atmosphere of the athletic department," Boyd said. "That's something that's special and it's different."
Boyd describes himself as a coach who expects a lot out of his players and will tell them exactly what they need to hear when they need to hear it.
"[I'm] very, very demanding on the field," Boyd said. "I have expectations and I expect them to be met and anything short of that isn't good enough. [I give] very direct feedback. I just give it to them straight immediately so they don't have to wonder what I'm thinking."
The players agree that Boyd's active style helps them improve their games.
"He continually critiques us and helps us and encourages us and he's really straightforward which helps a lot," senior forward/midfielder Alissa Oldenkamp said. "We know exactly what he's thinking and what we're supposed to be doing. If we do something wrong, he'll correct us. If we do something well, he'll let us know."
However, Boyd becomes a bit different when the game rolls around.
"On the other side of it, I believe game time is the players' time and I'm there to assist them and help them and not bark orders at them from the sideline," Boyd said. "The game time is when they get their freedom and hopefully I've done a good enough job training that [by then] they do the things we've been trying to implement."
In addition to coaching, Boyd also enjoyed a successful career as a player as he was a four-year letter winner and a 1989 honorable mention All-American at Tri-State University in Angola, Ind. and is now a member of its Hall of Fame.
After college, Boyd played one year of international soccer for Hamar Kameratena in Norway in 1990 and then played for the Region IV men's open team from 1991-1993.
Boyd first became interested in coaching when he started helping his mom coach his sister's team. He also assisted at summer camps during high school and college, but thought his future was in a different field.
"When I went to college, I thought I was going to go into the restaurant business," Boyd said. "I always really liked that, it's what I thought I'd do."
However, after his playing days were over Boyd found himself coaching club teams in Idaho and California and with the Region IV Olympic Development program before becoming Cal's assistant coach and recruiting coordinator in 1996 and ultimately the head coach in 1997.
"After I got done playing post-college I just fell into [coaching]," Boyd said. "It wasn't much pay, it was enough to barely feed me, and I thought 'I'll do this until I find a real job,' and it became a real job over a lot of years."
While his main goal this season is for his team to get better every game, Boyd hopes build a program that is consistently at the top of the conference and nation and eventually wants to win a national title during his tenure with the Sun Devils.
"If I didn't win a National Championship, I wouldn't be focused on the goal, so that's obviously the main one," Boyd said. "I would also like to get the program into the Top-20 as soon as possible and then into a Top-10 and Top-5. That is quite honestly a long-term project…it takes time to build a program so hopefully we've done our job with the team this year and next year to move considerably down the line."
The Boyd era begins when the Sun Devils take on Idaho State in the UNLV Classic in Las Vegas on August 31.
Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu.
