Alan Koch a native of Durban, South Africa will enter his fifth season as head coach of the Simon Fraser University men's soccer program in 2012. Koch, now a proud Canadian citizen, is the quickest coach in SFU history to get to the 50 win milestone. He has an overall head coach record of 90-27-2 (68-11-2 at SFU), and a .756 winning percentage. He has earned four consecutive Conference Coach of the Year awards since arriving at SFU.

Koch guided the Clan to their first undefeated season in the history of SFU men’s soccer in 2011 and second consecutive NCAA Division II title in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC).The team also finished the 2011 season ranked No. 1 in the NCAA, ahead of all other Division II schools.

A College All-American, Koch also played for several professional teams. His professional career started with Reservoir Hills United in the South African First Division. He later signed with Preussen Krefeld in the German Oberliga and concluded his professional career with Limerick FC in the League of Ireland First Division. In 2001, on advice from medical experts, Koch retired from football due to a heart condition. Prior to playing professionally, he was a member of the South African Olympic Team and captained the South African Schoolboys team. Koch is still ranked tenth in all time scoring at SFU as a midfielder.

RedNation Online: 2011 was a landmark season for the Simon Fraser Men's Soccer Team as they became the first non-U.S. school to be ranked in the NCAA top 25 and finished the NCAA regular season as the number 1 team in the NCAA D-2. What are some of the reasons that 2011 was such a successful year for the SFU program?

Alan Koch: It was an unbelievable year and I think part of the success was due to the cumulative process. I have now been here at SFU as a Head Coach for four years and I think that every single year we became significantly better. We knew that we were going into the NCAA and that we had to prepare for that transition by recruiting better student athletes every single year.

SFU has a history of success in the NAIA and we have had fantastic teams for many decades. But I think we have really taken it to a new level now with the group of players that we have here. They are all fantastic student athletes – they are great on the pitch and in the classroom – and they are playing at an incredibly high level where all of them are very close to making the jump to the professional level. That’s obviously the dream for players all over the planet and we have a group of guys who are all very close to that.

RNO: The previous coach that I interviewed for the From The Touchline series was Jaro Zawislan, who took over a struggling Cornell Men's Soccer Program and has really turned it around. You took over an already successful program and took it to an even higher level. How did you approach making a good program even that much better?

Alan Koch: It’s a challenge. I was fortunate enough to come over (to Canada) when I was recruited by SFU way back when. My predecessor, Dave Elligott is a close friend of mine. I think before I got here our program was focused mostly on just B.C. kids. And what we have done is that we have expanded our recruiting base. We have still gone after the best B.C. kids and also look all across Canada. We have brought in kids from Saskatchewan and Ontario and we look at every province now. We certainly also look down in the U.S. now that we have the NCAA exposure. And we have also managed to tap into a network of scouts across the globe to bring us some high profile players that have helped us to get to that next level.

RNO: For those people that aren't familiar with the history of the Simon Fraser Men's Soccer Team, an obvious question is probably often along the lines of why is the team competing in the NCAA rather than the CIS?

Alan Koch: I think it was the University’s philosophy many years ago when they created the athletics program. They wanted to differentiate themselves. They saw that there were obviously good options in Canada in terms of playing in the CIS, but, obviously whether we like it or not as Canadians, they do have more resources down in the States and a higher level of competition. And the University decided it wanted that challenge and went down that route.

At that time, the NAIA was the only option for Canadian institutions. But recently, thank goodness, the NCAA Division 2 opened up to non-American schools and it was a good fit for us, given that we had competed down in the States for so long. We decided to make the jump.

RNO: Are there any plans for SFU to move to the NCAA Division I level?

Alan Koch: Division I in the NCAA is not open yet and it may never be open to non-American schools. So that’s something that has been thrown around all over the place, but that’s not an option for anybody at this stage. The NCAA would have to change their legislation to actually open up Division I for us or any other school that isn’t American.

RNO: Managing a University Soccer team is different in many ways from managing a professional team. One of the main differences is that you know for sure that will lose key players every year due to players graduating. What is your approach to player succession planning?

Alan Koch: It’s huge and it’s an evolution. In this job you don’t just lose a player and then start thinking about finding a replacement once they have graduated. We graduated four players this year – three defenders and one outside midfielder – and we already have a plan in place with players that already played with us last year or players that we recruited for this year to come in take their spots. You don’t switch off for one second. You really have to stay on top of it all the time and definitely have to have a plan not just for the present and even the next year, but also for two, three and four years in advance, as you know when players will graduate and move on and get jobs, go to graduate school or play professionally, as lots of our former players have. You have to be ready to replace those players with quality new guys.

RNO: You have a Master's Degree in Human Resources. Obviously a lot of your role encompasses managing people and an organization. Has your educational background played a role in your success as a Head Coach?

Alan Koch: It’s funny – I get asked that all the time. A lot of people who are in a position like mine just have a football/soccer background. Thankfully I have that. I was fortunate enough growing up in South Africa to be exposed to the National Team and then played professionally for a few years, where I was exposed to the game at the highest level. I feel very fortunate to have the academic background as well. SFU gave me the opportunity many years ago to get a degree, which I was able to fall back on when I forced to stop playing professionally at 25.

And I do think going and getting my Master’s in Human Resources is directly applicable to coaching. It’s the motivational side, the recruitment, the retention and getting the best out of each individual that allows us to make the most out of every player that we have on the team and collectively allows us to be successful as a group.

RNO: It seems that lately we hear more about Head Coaches who either pay more attention to psychology or who operate their clubs on the same business principles that a successful corporation is run on, as opposed to the approaches of the stereotypical old school manager who yells a lot and makes his players run constantly. Do you think there has been a major change in the coaching profession?

Alan Koch: Definitely. I think that with modern day athletes – they are all so different. There are kids that need to be yelled at and there are kids that need to be coddled. You really have to manage and coach the individual. My coaching philosophy is not a blanket philosophy where we treat everybody the same way, because the players respond to different forms of instruction and we truly focus on the individual to get the most out of each individual player.

RNO: In addition to that individual approach, what do you think are the most important things a coach needs to do to get the best out of student athletes in particular?

Alan Koch: It’s tough to do at a place like SFU. We are one of Canada’s best academic institutions, which means that we have to have guys that are academically focused. And the harsh reality of the word that we live in is that not every player is academically focused. We have to recruit players who are both focused on being the best students that they can be and on being the best athletes they can be. If they have that equal focus on both, they can be very successful in this environment. And we do bring in guys that sometimes might not quite be where they need to be, but we have to work with them. And we are very fortunate to have fantastic resources here at SFU and a great support base that can help everybody to be successful.

RNO: You are a Simon Fraser alumnus. Does that make any difference in terms of your engagement in your position as Head Coach and the organizational dynamic with you leading the team?

Alan Koch: I think so. I think it makes it easier to relate to our alumni. Our alumni are guys that I played with, so once you have played with somebody at whatever level it was, you going to have a special bond with those individuals. So it certainly makes it easier from that perspective.

I think I also understand the SFU mentality. For somebody who was not previously exposed, it might not be easy for them to make the transition. It has certainly made my transition into being a Head Coach at SFU a little bit easier, just in terms of being aware of different philosophies that we have here on campus.

RNO: You have won plaudits for your abilities as a recruiter. What do you look for in terms of the qualities that prospective Simon Fraser players must have?

Alan Koch: Academics are obviously a vital part of it. And because we have such a great program, we are really looking for elite level players. There are a variety of different aspects of the game that we focus on in terms of the tools that an individual player needs to have to fit into our system.

I think I recruiting is two fold. We have to know what we have and then we have to need to know what we have to go and get to help us achieve the goals that we have.

RNO: You also have ties to the Whitecaps organization, who are obviously one of the central and most important organizations in terms of soccer in British Columbia and in Canada. Does that relationship have any concrete effect on Simon Fraser soccer?

Alan Koch: I guess in many respects it does. I used to coach the Whitecaps Women’s team in the W-League. Even before those days I had a great relationship with Whitecaps. When I was playing professionally in the League of Ireland, I was in discussion with them to come back and play for them – they were the 86ers at the time. But I decided to stay in Europe at the time. I have had a good, positive long term relationship with them and that obviously includes coaching for them. They have also used our facilities here at SFU as their training base.

We’ve brought some of their players that had been involved in their Residency Program into our team. So we feel very fortunate to have a close relationship with an MLS team. There aren’t many universities in Canada or the States that have that type of relationship. And I think it helps us and it certainly helps them at the same time.

RNO: You recently won the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s (NSCAA) Far West region men’s Coach of the Year award, joining 23 other National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) regional winners, and you were the runner up for the NSCAA’s men’s national coach of the year award. What do individual awards mean to you personally and how valuable are they for the SFU soccer program?

Alan Koch: For me personally, individual awards don’t mean that much. My goal here is to help the team be as successful as possible. And what we are striving for right now is to be the first Canadian team to win an NCAA National Championship. We have had so many firsts – we’ve been the first Canadian team to win an NCAA Conference Championship, the first Canadian team to be ranked in an NCAA poll, and the first Canadian team to be ranked number one in any sport.

Those are the things that are the most gratifying to me in terms of what we are doing as a team. The individual awards for a coach or a player are a nice bonus, but, as many of our players have said, and I will say it as a coach, we are here for the team. Without the team we don’t really have any success. And the ultimate goal here is to win the NCAA National Championship and we will keep doing whatever it takes until we reach that goal.

RNO: You were born in South Africa and came to Canada and Simon Fraser University in the late '90's to play soccer and get an education. How have you seen soccer evolve in Canada and British Columbia in particular since you first arrived at Simon Fraser?

Alan Koch: It has evolved considerably. I think a huge part of the growth has obviously been the Whitecaps and their going into Major League Soccer. But I think it is also that we are seeing a lot of our Canadian players from across the country not necessarily staying in Canada and they are going to other places. Some go down to the States and NCAA schools and other players are trying to go over to Europe to play with professional teams at a very young age. The landscape has certainly changed. I think we are also now a big part of that changing landscape with the fact that we are now the only Canadian school in the NCAA. And I think that certainly makes us a far more marketable option for a lot of up and coming players. We are helping them get an education of course, but we are also helping them get to MLS or other professional opportunities.

RNO: Young Canadian soccer players have more options than they have ever had before, with professional teams and their academies presenting one option, Canadian and U.S. universities presenting another and, of course, heading to Europe is yet another option. What advice do you give to young players who come to you asking about which route they should take?

Alan Koch: It’s hard for me to be unbiased in that situation, but a lot of the time I call back on my own personal experiences. I, like many players who love the game, would have loved to have played for a long time and had a lengthy career, but unfortunately the harsh reality of the world that we live in is that very few people get to play professionally and then even fewer people get to play professionally for an extended period of time.

That’s where getting an academic background is absolutely vital for these young players. We are very fortunate in North America, as that doesn’t really exist in other places in terms of being able to get an education while furthering your (soccer) career at the same time. And that’s where I am a firm believer in the avenue that we are able to offer at Simon Fraser, in terms of being able to come and get an education in the event that you don’t make it, you have other options to fall back on and you have that degree to help you.

But also, if you do want to make it to the professional level, as we have done many times before, we can help you explore that and help push you to get to that professional level. In my opinion, it’s the best of both worlds and I am a full believer in the student athlete experience in terms of what it may offer guys down the road.