Female coach Boyd leading Christian Heritage boys soccer to new heights
Apr. 7—It's a situation that Christian Heritage School boys soccer coach Rachel Boyd often finds herself in.
A pregame chat with the opposing coach sometimes leads to the same ignorant question.
"The biggest thing that is unique is when we travel other places to play, other coaches will come up to me and not realize that I'm the head coach," said Boyd, who is in her fourth year coaching the boys soccer program at Christian Heritage. "I've gone up and introduced myself, and, after we talk, he says 'Can you introduce me to the head coach?'"
It's a question and reaction Boyd has gotten used to.
"It's just kind of funny at this point," she said. "Other than that, there's not really anything else unique about me being a female coach."
If opposing coaches were shocked to see a female head coach leading the Lions from the sidelines, any question they had about Boyd's ability likely dissipated once they saw Christian Heritage play.
The Lions, led by Boyd and a stellar senior class this season, won their first ever area championship while at the Georgia High School Association level. The team headed into the Class A Division II playoffs with eyes on a run at what would be the program's first state championship.
"I'm so happy to have her as a coach," one of those Lion seniors, Peter Pridgen, said of Boyd. "Anybody that has criticized her as a coach because she's a woman. That doesn't matter. What matters is how much she understands the game. She's just awesome."
It was partly because of Pridgen and the crop of Lion 2023 seniors that led Boyd to take the job in the first place.
Boyd played at Dalton High School and collegiately at Berry College.
She wasn't really looking to get into coaching out of college, but her old local club program, the Northwest Soccer Academy led by John-Eric Bolger, was searching for coaching contributors.
"I have a heart for ministry and for discipling and serving young people," Boyd said. "He was looking for coaches at the time and asked me. It was cool just to watch him and I realized that there was something really cool to how you get to serve kids through soccer."
"At the time, I thought I'd maybe just do it for a season of life, but here I am still coaching," Boyd said.
Boyd spent six years coaching exclusively girls teams. In addition to her work with the Belles, she became an assistant for the girls program at Dalton High and later moved over to Christian Heritage.
When these current Lion seniors were eighth-graders, there was an opening for a middle school boys coach, and Boyd was asked to fill in.
A year later, the varsity position was open, and Boyd was suddenly the school's head boys soccer coach.
"It all happened so quickly that I didn't really have time to process that it was pretty unique that I was getting to coach a group of boys," she said.
She's the only female head coach among any of the 37 total boys soccer, football, basketball, baseball or wrestling programs in Whitfield and Murray counties.
"What helped that is that the guys just respond to me," Boyd said. "I've never had any problems with respect."
Boyd demands that respect pretty quickly for any newcomers to the program.
"It's probably typical of high school boys in general (to not want to listen sometimes)," Boyd said. "But they know I'm not afraid of making them run. They'll run until the point is made. New guys coming into the program quickly find out 'Hey, we don't mess around.'"
But that respect also comes because the team knows where her heart is.
"They know that I care, because I'm not afraid to show them that I care," Boyd said. "At the end of the day, they know I love them because I tell them."
"It's not even always about soccer," Pridgen said. "She's building us up to be good men."
Pridgen said he's heard a few negative comments from opposing players when they, too, are late to realize that Boyd actually is the head coach.
"Sometimes they're just shocked," Pridgen said. "They don't really know. But she's just awesome."
