New Racing Louisville head coach Bev Yanez on the transition from playing to coaching

April 28, 2024

Bev Yanez is the new head coach for Racing Louisville. Yanez’s playing career spans two professional leagues in the U.S., six clubs, and four countries; her coaching career has ranged all the way from individual youth coaching up to her most recent position as Racing’s assistant coach. She replaces the outgoing Kim Björkegren, who had a mixed tenure in Louisville and led the team to a ninth place finish in the 2023 standings. Yanez now will immediately jump into a college draft ahead of the 2024 season.

Amidst a hectic media day, Yanez talked to The Athletic about her journey from player to coach and what she thinks Racing needs going into next season.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I know that it’s no good looking back and wondering ‘what if I didn’t retire,’ but is there ever a pang inside of you that’s like, yeah, I remember that time, it was so good. Now is now, but I’d love to be out there.

I feel like as soon as I came into this coaching role, it was very clear that I was a coach. I never had the instinct to want to be a player again, want to be playing again. I think it’s just because of how passionate I am about coaching and educating. I feel it was early on in my career when I really started to feel the pull towards the passion. I was coaching and playing at the same time, running individual lessons, running small group training sessions, coaching details of certain positions, and then also coaching within the academy at the time. … Of course, I remember like, man, this used to give me goosebumps walking out and listening to the national anthem and this type of stuff.

That’s really interesting because I was going to ask you about that transition from player to coach. It’s not quite the same, but I’ve talked to a couple of former players who are now GMs like Yael (Averbuch), who has spoken about how, as a GM, she finally realized why some of the stuff that she wished was different as a player was that way. It’s kind of like when you’re a parent you realize the stuff you hated as a kid was maybe necessary. But it sounds like the transition wasn’t quite like that for you.

I think it was a little bit interesting, a little bit different in the sense that I was able to dive into my passion as a coach while I was still playing, because I felt like a lot of what I was teaching and coaching were still areas of my game. So I’m sitting here going, ‘Check your shoulders, check your shoulders,’ and I knew I was not checking my shoulders nearly enough, right.

That initial transition — I wish as a player I knew how much went into this. How much thought process went into what a Monday through Friday looks like. How much thought process went into what the other team is going to present, what’s their strengths, what’s their weaknesses, what’s going to be our opportunities, who are their threats, what are their threats? How do we continue to keep our identity within that? I never knew how much went into it until being in more of a team, academy type environment and progressing and tracking what those pieces were. … I feel like I appreciated it as a player, but I feel like if I knew actually how much went into it that I know now, I would have maybe appreciated a little bit more, for sure (laughs).

I came out to Racing earlier this year and I saw you running drills with the players. And Kim himself also talked earlier this season about how you were really handling all of the day to day and he was zooming out his focus more, but now that’s your role. I’m just wondering what your approach is to balancing it out, now that you’re the person who has to zoom out too.

Every head coach is different with what they would like their involvement to be in this type of thing. And I know that I’m a very vocal person in that sense, and I like to be involved. But it’s finding that support in the balance, in the staff of who’s next to me, and who’s to my left, who’s to my right. In the sense of what we are trying to teach, and creating an environment for these players to thrive in and creating that buy-in very early on, and coaching that detail very early on, where these players genuinely feel like they’re developing in individual aspects, but more importantly as a collective group. For me, it’s going to be the focus there.

Obviously we still have Sergio (Gonzalez) as the goalkeeper coach, but it’s going to be building these assistant coaches. You want it to be people that you trust. People that you know will continue to repeat the same message in regards to what our identity is and what our style of play is, but also people that will genuinely challenge these players and create a supportive environment for these players.

When you talk about buy-in, as someone who has player experience, what made you feel like you wanted to buy-in? And then I know there’s what, 25 different personalities on the team, but what is your approach to buy-in?

I think it’s creating an environment early on, where you’re building relationships with players that they trust that you’re genuinely interested in making sure that they improve. There’s one thing that players all share in common at this level, whether they’ve just been drafted, whether they’ve been in the league for two years, or they’ve been capped for their international team 18 times, is they all want to improve and they all want to be challenged in their environment. Within that you have to find a balance of building a relationship to understand when the support’s needed, when the challenge is needed, what type of challenge it is for this player in reference to this type of player. But it’s in building those relationships.

I consistently say, if I’ve got a player that’s in this space, and I need them to be in this space, how do I get them there? I think everybody has a different time frame. And we talk about them all being different, but then we can’t expect them to all click at the same time. And so I think it’s continuing to understand what those different pieces are. You might need 17 meetings with the one player to create that relationship, and you might need two with another player. And so for us, it’s just consistently showing, this is what we believe in, and this is what we believe will get you here.

Racing was ninth in the league and now there’s a coaching switch. You talked previously about wanting to have a style and identity. So I’m just wondering what didn’t go well this past season that you really want to take steps to improve and do well this coming season, especially as it relates to identity?

I think it’s just establishing early on what the expectations are, and what those positional expectations are. For me it’s less of a reflection on what didn’t go well last season. It’s more of a reflection on where are we at, and how do we get to where we need to get to. … How we kick off this preseason is going to be so crucial. How you start things in regards to how you gain that buy-in, what your detail is within that buy-in, making sure that the group fully understands what this is gonna look like throughout the season.

There’s a draft coming up. In talking with your GM (Ryan Dell), have you guys started discussing some of the areas you’d like to target?

In full transparency, we’ve started this process very early on with very specific people working in this space and they’ve done some incredible work. Sergio having the background he does in the college game is incredibly helpful. He’s got a ton of contacts. He knows the game very well. And he’s done an incredible job organizing these pieces, and alongside all of us together in these meetings, we’ve prepped early to better understand where we’re at, what we’re looking for with these types of pieces, and have kind of solidified what those buckets are.

What’s the number one thing you would hope a player would describe you as, as a coach?

Umm. “Investment.” I would hope that they understand that I’m invested in them individually and what their growth looks like, both on and off the pitch. And I’m invested in the group and what the group’s success looks like. And I think that investment in feeling valued in who they are as people and who they are as players is incredibly important, and so I hope they would feel that. She’s invested in who we are. She’s going to challenge us when she needs to challenge us. She’s going to support us when she needs to support us. And I’m going to get it wrong sometimes. I’m going to challenge when I should have supported, and I’m going to support when I should have challenged and it’s those pieces I need to learn early on — use my support staff as quickly as possible to make sure that we’re driving this ship forward in a positive direction.

(Photo: EM Dash-USA TODAY Sports)

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