University of Colorado Women’s Soccer Head Coach, Bill Hempen has accepted the position of Technical Advisor to the Boulder County Force soccer club’s girls competitive program. Hempen will offer his wealth of soccer experience, coaching methods and soccer knowledge to the Boulder County Force. Committed to giving back to the soccer community, Hempen has been actively supporting the Boulder County Force as a coaching clinician and through his player clinics and camps.

"We are excited to further develop our relationship with Bill Hempen and University of Colorado," explains Boulder County Force Director of Operations, Hardy Kalisher. "We are always trying to be proactive in improving the quality of our player training and coaching methods. Having the insights and experience of Coach Hempen will help our coaching staff and players achieve their goals. This is a great news for Force soccer community."

"The CU Buffs are the pinnacle of women’s soccer in Colorado, our players support their home games and look up to them. Bill Hempen has been very supportive of our players and this will further inspire them," said BCF Director of Coaching Youth Girls, Ryan Henkel.
 

Bill Hempen’s Bio::

After seven seasons at the University of Colorado, head coach Bill Hempen has produced a team that battles for the Big 12 Conference championship year in and year out. When he arrived in Boulder in the summer of 2001, he found himself inheriting a team that though close, had yet to put together a winning Big 12 season. He started to put the pieces in place that would make Colorado Soccer a success.

It then took just two seasons to orchestrate the biggest single-season turnaround in CU and Big 12 history, and one of the best in the nation when his 2002 squad went 10-8-2 and finished fifth in the league just a year after his first team struggled at 3-11-1 to finish 10th. It would take just one more year to turn naysayers into believers as the Buffs went from 10th to first with the program’s first conference title, a 15-4-1 record, nine shutouts, a 14-match unbeaten streak, the school’s first national ranking in the sport, a Big 12 Coach of the Year title for Hempen and the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid in 2003.

While Hempen took a leap of faith to leave a Duke program that he started in 1988, he credits others that leapt along with him for bringing Colorado its first conference crown in 2003. Along with the efforts of his assistant coaches, he credits 2003 Big 12 Player of the Year Fran Munnelly’s commitment to come to CU during that 3-11-1 season, "She must have seen my passion and commitment to make it work here. My track record, the locale and University was good enough for her to come here."

Since his arrival in Boulder during the summer of 2001, Colorado soccer has reinvented itself. He won his 50th game at CU when the Buffs topped UNC 3-0 on Oct. 10, 2005, and coached his milestone 350th game on Oct. 17, 2004 and the record breaking 7-0 shutout against Texas Tech gave the 17-year veteran his milestone 200th career victory. He is among the all-time winningest coaches in NCAA Division I women’s soccer history, with 241 career wins, good for 19th on the active list.

As the program enters its 13th season, one need only look at Hempen’s leadership when charting its future. Since his arrival, the Buffs have gone 79-51-19 (.608) overall and 35-27-8 (.565) in Big 12 Conference play. Included in five top-five league finishes is the 2003 Big 12 Championship and that season’s player, rookie and coach of the year in addition to 20 player appearances on All-Big 12 teams. Colorado has claimed 11 spots on all-region teams, and boasts a three time All-American in Fran Munnelly, who was also named to the Big 12 10th Anniversary team in 2005. Hempen has coached the Buffaloes to five-straight NCAA appearances, including a program-best appearance in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen in 2006.

In the classroom, 54 players have been named to Academic All-Big 12 teams while the 2003 squad won the athletic department’s most improved honor for a team as its aggregate grade point average rose .44 from the previous academic year. In 2005, senior goalkeeper Jessie Keller was named a CoSIDA District VII Academic All-Region Soccer Team member, the first in CU history.

When hired on June 5, 2001, Bill Hempen came to Boulder with eight NCAA Tournament Appearances, three ACC Coach of the Year honors, 1992 National Soccer Coaches Association of America National Coach of the Year recognition, and one of the winningest programs during the last decade under his belt.

He came to Colorado from Duke, where he had been the Blue Devils’ head coach since the program’s inception in 1988. He led the Blue Devils to eight appearances in the NCAA Tournament and had a career record of 162-100-16 (.676) in Durham. He was the NSCAA National Coach of the Year in 1992, and was also named Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year three times (1992, 1994 and 1997) while directing Duke to the 16th most wins in the country (124) in the 1990s. Hempen’s Duke teams finished the season ranked in the national polls nine times with their highest finish coming in 1994, a No. 4 ranking following Duke’s first ACC regular season title and a win over 13-time national champion North Carolina to snap the Tar Heels’ 101-game unbeaten streak.

The 1992 season was among Hempen’s finest, as he led his team to a school-record 17 wins and a berth in the national championship game in its first trip to the NCAA tournament. Since then, Duke teams have advanced to the NCAA tournament every season sans 1998. In his 13 seasons at Duke, he coached nine All-Americans, 34 All-ACC players, seven Academic All-ACC selections and three players that played professionally in the WUSA.

He also has significant experience with the United States Soccer Federation’s Olympic Development Program, specifically in Region III and as the head coach of Colorado’s state ODP Program.

Born June 6, 1958 in St. Louis, Hempen graduated from Bishop DeBourg High School before attending Meramec Community College in St. Louis where he split time in goal for Meramec’s 1976 Junior College National Championship and 1977 Runner-Up teams. He continued his collegiate career as a two-year letterwinner in goal at the University of Evansville for the 1978 and ‘79 seasons compiling a 22-11-6 mark in that span. He graduated from Evansville in 1981 with a degree in Health/Physical Education. The New Jersey Americans of the American Soccer League drafted Hempen in 1980.

Hempen got his start in the coaching profession as a graduate assistant at Northeast Louisiana before assuming full-time assistant duties at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., where he served three years prior to his start at Duke. He was an assistant coach on the Blue Devil men’s team from 1986-1991, compiling a 78-36-7 overall record and 16-16-4 ACC slate. In those six seasons Duke advanced to three NCAA Tournaments, winning the NCAA Championship in ‘86 with a 1-0 victory over Akron in Seattle.

He married then-Duke assistant coach and 1990 Colorado graduate Stephanie Poncher in 1999. The couple has an 8-year-old daughter, Emma, and a 6-year-old son, Lucas.