Jeremy Evans graduated from Marquette University in the spring of 2000 with aspirations of being a sports writer.
As he looked to start his newspaper career, he interviewed for two options — one in Alaska and the other in Carson City.
The job in Alaska came with a catch. If he accepted it, his longtime girlfriend said she wouldn’t move with him, essentially ending that relationship.
“She made it very clear she’s not going to Alaska but she’ll go to Carson City,” Evans said. “I had not been offered the Carson City job at the Nevada Appeal yet, so I went ahead and just took the Alaska job thinking the Nevada Appeal job wouldn’t come. My girlfriend was in tears for a little bit. But within an hour of accepting the job in Alaska, the Nevada Appeal sports editor offered me the job. I thought that’d be a better fit.”
Evans’ arrival in Northern Nevada in June 2000 meant he got to keep his girlfriend, who is now his wife, and begin his desired career path. More than 25 years later, Evans is still in the region, only in a far different role. After covering Wolf Pack athletics for a couple of years, Evans is now a Nevada head coach after being hired as the Wolf Pack’s women’s soccer coach last month.
The native of Mesa, Ariz., foresaw the decline of newspaper jobs after a couple of years on the job in Carson, so he switched to teaching after he was envious of his wife’s work schedule. Evans began coaching South Tahoe’s junior-varsity soccer team before being promoted to the varsity position. In 2015, he accepted Lake Tahoe Community College’s women’s soccer coach job, and a decade after that has now been hired by Nevada where he’ll coach the team he used to cover.
“I would say I’ve eyed this program for well over a decade,” Evans said. “My time as a sports writer here, I got to know a lot of the soccer people. I’ve seen soccer grow in this area and seen soccer’s growth in Las Vegas. By the time I got the Lake Tahoe Community College job in 2015, I had a pretty good idea of the state of soccer in Nevada. Lake Tahoe Community College became one of the best programs in the country. I don’t want to say I’m the reason why. The coach does matter. But the reality is Reno and Las Vegas players were the reason Lake Tahoe became one of the best teams in the country.”
Evans will be tasked with doing something no coach before him has accomplished — make Nevada soccer a winner.
The Wolf Pack program was created in 2000, playing its first match a couple of month after Evans was hired by the Nevada Appeal. In the 26 seasons since, it has had just two winning seasons, most recently in 2006. Evans is the ninth head coach in program history with only one person winning more than 37 percent of their matches, that being Terri Patraw, who went 26-27-7 from 2004-06.
Evans is used to ground-up builds. He took over Lake Tahoe Community College a year after the program was founded and turned it into one of the West Coast’s top junior-college teams, going 144-47-26 in 10 seasons and winning eight conference titles with a pair of Final Four berths in the California Community College Athletic Association. Evans also coached the Lake Tahoe Community College’s men’s team. Now, he’ll get to focus on one program.
“I don’t wanna say a sleeping giant or diamond in the rough because those are very cliche, but I think it’s a program (that can win),” Evans said of Nevada. “I’ve had many coaches in Division I circles tell me, ‘Jeremy, if you get that job, you can do something.’ I’ve always thought you could do something special here.”
Evans’ coaching history predates his time at Lake Tahoe Community College. He also was a success at South Tahoe, leading the Vikings to back-to-back Class 3A state championships in 2013 and 2014 while going 38-5-4. Evans said his unorthodox ascension to coaching the Wolf Pack makes him the perfect candidate for the job, which doesn’t had an ideal infrastructure, namely a home stadium that doesn’t measure up to those enjoyed by local junior-college programs like Lake Tahoe Community College and Truckee Meadows Community College. But Evans will not lean on excuses with the Wolf Pack.
“I got my start as a JV coach at South Tahoe High School for three years, then was a varsity coach,” Evans said. “I’ve been on a lot of yellow busses all across Nevada from Elko to Spring Creek to state championships in Nevada. I have a real appreciation from starting from the ground up. I look at programs, not what they don’t have, but what they do have. That’s been me every step of the way. I think you shortchange your athletes when you come up with excuses. Don’t come with excuses. They’re just challenges. Overcome them. That just builds resiliency.
“My first year as a varsity coach, we had to take on this Pahrump Valley team that had a player named Sydney Sladek who went to USC. She was All-Pac-12 freshman, won a national title there. They had beat South Tahoe 6-2 in the state semifinals during my final year as the JV coach. I got the varsity job the next year. Pahrump returned everybody. They were a power. We returned maybe half our starting lineup. I just scouted, watched film and all the parents were like, ‘This guy’s a little crazy and delusional. He thinks he can beat this team.’ And we beat them 3-2.”
Evans said that state championship gave him the belief he could be a successful coach. Now at Nevada, Evans said his mix of “optimism, delusion and craziness” should put the Wolf Pack on the right track, adding he’ll lean on prep players from Nevada to build his roster. Part of his sales pitching centers on being part of something that’s never been accomplished before.
“The message is … ‘Hey, why go to this school or that school and just be one of 400 great players in their history? Why don’t you come here and build a legacy and be part of the first conference championship in 18 years?'” Evans said. “I think players that respond to that are the ones that are going to respond to my coaching and my recruiting to come be part or something special and not be just another number somewhere else.”
You can watch the full interview with Nevada women’s soccer coach Jeremy Evans at the top of this page.