In late January, AU welcomed Adam Christensen as the new women’s soccer coach. Christensen has ties to Indiana, living here for over 16 years. Once he graduated from Avon High School, Christensen played for several different colleges in three different sports.
Last year, Christensen was the assistant men’s soccer coach at Lee University. He is currently the head coach of Cleveland United FC, a semi-professional team in Tennessee. Once the inaugural season of the club is completed, he will transition to all the normal duties of being a head coach and leader of the women’s soccer team here at AU.
“I actually knew people who went to AU. I played with some guys in high school who eventually played here”, says Christensen. “When I saw that the job had been posted, I thought that AU would be a really decent place.” Christensen has also coached the high school, collegiate, and semi-pro levels for over 10 years.
This is Christensen’s second time being the leader of a program, and he looks forward to the challenges that the role brings here at AU. “It was a wonderful experience last time in terms of being the head coach, just the school and all those things. I loved the town. I loved the girls. I loved my team. It was just awesome.”
Christensen looks forward to bringing that atmosphere to AU as well, but looks forward to leading the program in other areas beyond just the X’s and O’s. “I think there’s a level of professionalism you want and you strive for. When I was going through the interview process, my wife Kristen and I looked at a few different schools and had different offers from them that we turned down,” he said.
School atmosphere and the beliefs that the school represents were also a major part of the process for him and his wife. “It very much came down to what a school believes. When it comes to what a school does, there’s a level of professionalism that you expect. For us, it was okay; we needed to not just find a place to run a program.
Like any new coach coming to a program, Christensen has his goals “The goal should be a conference championship every single year. The goal should be to make a run at a national tournament. With everything that I’ve seen, all the research that I had done previously, and the research that I’ve done into this team specifically, that is the level they can be at, and they need to be at, and they should want to be at.”
Christensen realizes he has to put in the work to get the team to the next level “Going forward, obviously, parts of it are recruiting. Parts of it are the development of the players that we already have. Parts of it are bringing in the right players and then teaching them and giving them the things that they need in order to be at that level.
“For me, it comes down to a lot of different things. Are we doing the film work well? Are we doing the tactical work well? Are we developing the players individually? My goal as a coach is every single day, every single player gets just a little bit better.” Christensen believes he is just as accountable, “If I’m also not holding myself to that, that’s a problem.”