His charisma won his wife’s heart. His confidence won Marshall its first ever Division I national championship. Now, with a new five-year contract, the best soccer coach in the nation is putting down roots in Huntington.
By Keith Morehouse
HQ 114 | SUMMER 2021
Chris Grassie knows a thing or two about compelling motivational speeches. His pregame talk prior to the national championship win over Indiana — which was later posted on the internet — had Marshall fans ready to run through their computer screens and suit up for the green and white.
There was, however, a time earlier in Grassie’s coaching career when his efforts at persuasion came up just a bit short. He was an assistant coach at the University of Michigan when he had begun dating a girl named Allison. In 2010 he was offered the head coaching job at the University of Charleston, and he asked Allison to accompany him to West Virginia.
“Not long after he took the job in West Virginia he asked me to move with him,” Allison recalled. “I told him ‘no,’ that I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
Just because Grassie was turned down didn’t mean he was going to give up. After all, soccer coaches are used to going to overtime.
“We dated long distance for a year and a half, then in January of 2013 we got married over spring break,” Allison said. “It was his combination of charisma, confidence and character that sealed the deal for me.”
Since then they’ve added son Ever and daughter Ia, and they’ve become quite the soccer parents.
“From the second that I met him, he sort of oozed confidence,” Allison said. “That’s contagious, and attractive. It was hook, line and sinker. I always believed in him and wanted to ride that wave of confidence that he had.”
That confidence is a personality trait, not just a tactic he uses in a pregame speech. It was why he was the least surprised person in Cary, North Carolina, when the Thundering Herd ran the table to capture the university’s first-ever NCAA Division I national championship.
“I totally believed what we could do from day one,” Grassie said. “This has been the mission. We didn’t just want to compete. We wanted a great soccer program. In terms of what you do as a soccer team, you play in a pyramid — and you want to get to the top of the pyramid.”
But even Grassie must have done a double take after the Herd beat unbeaten Fordham, No. 1 ranked Clemson, defending national champ Georgetown, No. 16 ranked North Carolina and 8-time national champion Indiana to stun the college soccer universe.
Marshall rewarded Grassie with a new five-year contract that will pay him $375,000 a year. That kind of money stands up to the highest salaries in NCAA college soccer.
“What makes me most proud is what we can do for Marshall and Huntington now,” Grassie said. “I live here, my family lives here and we want to make this the best place we can. I think our team has shown that anything is possible. This is such an exciting time.”
So where does the Herd program go from here?
His program loses College Cup MVP Jamil Roberts to the professional ranks but returns virtually every other star from the 2020 national title team. Grassie’s team finished ranked No.1 in the nation, and the coaching staff was named the top staff in the country by the United Soccer Coaches.
The Herd has played its way from the kid’s table to a seat with the big boys. Marshall’s program, “un-herd” of for much of its existence, now has all of college soccer’s attention.
“I think we should be considered a blue blood now,” Grassie said. “You get that star on your chest, you get to sort of join in. We still have plenty of ammunition to defend our national championship next season because people have already written us off. We hear them say things like, ‘It was a fluke. It was a Cinderella story.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you not watch us play? We dominated every game.’ ”
Grassie is ever-effusive in his praise of his team and what the program’s accomplished in his time at Marshall. But the Herd can only savor the national title for so long before the team runs straight into the 2021 schedule in August. It features an exhibition against North Carolina and includes home games against West Virginia, Kentucky, Akron and the University of South Carolina. Combine that with a rugged Conference USA schedule and there’s no free pass back to the NCAA tournament.
“Defending a title is always harder,” junior forward Milo Yosef said. “Being the underdog kind of helps. But knowing that you already did it just gives you a great confidence boost and convinces you that you can do it again. The pressure will be there but I think we can handle it.”
The team knows the stakes will never be higher than in 2021. You can’t do better than hauling home a national championship trophy.
“If we get to the semifinal of the College Cup next year I don’t think we get a parade,” Grassie said. “It’s one of those things where it’s like we have raised the bar, but that’s fine. That’s where we want to live. We want to live on that knife’s edge of being champions, being the very, very best that we can be. That’s the consequence of it.”
Chris Grassie will ask a lot of his team this coming season. And, he’s pretty good at getting what he wants.
