“This Game Has Given Me Everything” Heather Dyche takes UNM soccer to new heights and is grateful for every moment By Glen Rosales
P
erhaps a telling measure of Heather Dyche’s regard within the soccer community came last summer when she was hired by New Mexico United as a technical staff special advisor for the men’s professional team that plays in the USL Championship League. This was somewhat groundbreaking for the league, as she became only the second woman to join a team’s technical staff. But for Dyche, accomplishing the unusual was nothing unusual. Dyche, who has been The University of New Mexico’s soccer coach since 2015 and guided the Lobos to consecutive NCAA tournament appearances for the first time in program history, has made a habit of busting gender-based constraints through her sheer ability to achieve results. 32
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“The opportunities the sport gives you are so unique. And when you’re the facilitator of that and you get to create that for your athletes, that’s pretty cool,” she said. “I just fell in love with that. I love coaching. I still do.” Dyche, 42, was a two-sport, four-year star in both soccer and basketball at Eldorado High School in Albuquerque, playing hoops under soon-to-be UNM women’s basketball coach Don Flanagan. She accepted a soccer scholarship at Nebraska but wanted out after one year and toyed with the idea of returning home to play again under Flanagan for the Lobos. “It came down to Florida State soccer or UNM basketball,” Dyche said. “That was my final two choices. And actually, Coach Flanagan told me to go play soccer. He said, ‘You can come here if you want. I know
you’ll play. There’s a scholarship for you. But you’re a soccer player, I know you are.’ And he was right.” After three successful years playing for the Seminoles, Dyche was ready to join the Atlanta Beat of the professional Women’s United Soccer Association. But the league folded before she got the chance. A couple of her FSU teammates were headed back home to Norway to play and invited Dyche along. “Which, obviously, is the coolest thing ever,” she said with a grin. “It was the time of my life. We had done a little bit of coaching during the latter part of it just to pay bills — running youth clinics and doing some of that stuff for the club. Then we took a coaching license there, actually because if you have the license, you got paid more. We were really broke.”
