Mike Regan was getting comfortable, and that was his problem.
He had just completed his fourth season as an assistant coach at Drake in Des Moines, Iowa, under head coach Lindsey Horner. It was Regan’s second coaching job in Iowa following seven years as a men's coach at North Iowa Area Community College.
Regan was a veteran at Drake. He understood his team and job duties well and could sense that he was doing mostly the same things each year. He was living in the area where his wife Maradee’s family was from and was well on his way to building the family he wanted with sons Kiernan (6) and Liam (3) growing up fast.
Life was steady and predictable. It was what Regan knew.
And that was his problem.
“Everything was fine, and I would have been fine to stay,” Regan says now, “but I needed that next adventure.”
It was around that same time that Regan heard of a job opening up at Indiana. Former IU assistant coach Benji Walton took a job as the head coach at Kennesaw State leaving Indiana head coach Amy Berbary in need of a replacement. After a bit of research, Regan could tell he qualified for the position but realized the move would be a life-changing one that would shape the rest of his career.
He told his wife it was the adventure he was looking for, and it was maybe his last chance to take it.
“I did say to her when I applied that if the opportunity comes up, it was kind of going to be make or break for me,” Regan said. “I could continue to do what I’m doing at Drake within my comfort zone, and we’d be fine. Or I could step outside my comfort zone, and we could challenge each other.
“That’s exactly what we’ve done.”
***
Regan has spent his whole life chasing soccer balls around and hasn’t been afraid of uprooting himself to do it.
Originally from Yateley, a suburb of West London, Regan grew up playing in the youth ranks of England’s professional league clubs. His own English career peaked at the semi-professional level with Staines Town Football Club as a teenager.
Regan grew up learning the game from his father, Ray, who was a mechanical engineer by day, a coach by night and a mentor always. Ray coached his sons when he could as a hobby, at the very least volunteering his time and money to ensure they’d have all the opportunities they could within the game.
Soccer was in Mike’s blood, and Ray could tell he could make a living out of it.
“My dad, he did everything for us,” Mike said. “As a kid, he gave me a lot of opportunities to play in different areas of the country, different areas of Europe. But when it comes to coaching, he was the one that said, ‘Listen, your career is coaching. You know the game. You need your qualifications. Go do it.’”
Getting the qualifications wasn’t the problem—Mike holds the highest coaching license available. The issue was finding a job.
The gigs were too far and in between in England, where the game was a national pastime. The working environment was too saturated with coaches who’d work long hours for low pay just to be around the game. Coaching there was a pipe dream.
Ray saw that there were other players leaving England for the United States to chase after jobs at various clubs and colleges either as players or coaches. Mike fit the bill.
“You should go check it out,” Ray told his son at 19.
“We’ll see,” Mike said, not sure he wanted to leave the comforts of home.
But an opportunity opened up to play for the Ottawa Fury in Canada within the next year. Mike was hesitant to leave what he knew but took his father’s advice and made the 4,000-mile flight across the Atlantic to pursue soccer in North America.
The first adventure was on.
***
Regan didn’t last long as a player in North America, and that was the plan.
He picked up his first job in 2005 at 20 years old as an assistant coach at North Iowa Community College under head coach Colin Murphy.
By the time he was 22, Regan was named the head coach when Murphy opted to leave the program to spend more time with family. The gig wasn’t full time, the resources were limited and the pay wasn’t great—but it was soccer.
“That was all I needed,” Regan said. “They were looking for a head coach to fill a part time position. It was a great job for me.”
Expectations? There were none.
Regan did virtually everything as the head coach of the NAIA program out of Calmar, Iowa, all while completing his education with two years there before earning a bachelor’s degree in Wellness from Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa.
He took the program from a spot where it was looking anywhere to hire a part-time head coach to a top-10 team nationally. Regan was recruiting players at a high level, and more importantly, sending athletes to Division I colleges after a year of prep with a head coach who was practically still their age.
“I was in the deep end quickly and had to figure a lot of things out,” Regan said. “So that was a great grounding for me at a young age when you’re ripe and you think you know everything.”
Regan was finally being paid full time in his seventh season at North Iowa but got called on by colleague Lindsey Horner to join her staff at Drake as an assistant with her women’s program.
This choice wasn't nearly as difficult. It was what he came to the U.S. to do.
He took the job, and for the next four years, his Division I coaching career was off and running.
***
Amy Berbary didn’t know who Mike Regan was. She hadn’t even the slightest idea.
So when his name popped into her email inbox with a resume and an application, Berbary didn’t initially make much of it.
“If I’m being quite honest, I thought I knew who I was going to hire,” Berbary said. “But his name just kept coming up.”
When the assistant position on Berbary’s staff opened, she estimated about 100 applicants came her way. As is usually the case in these types of hires, Berbary initially figured she would hire someone she already knew and was comfortable with that she had met along her own coaching career.
That is, not someone like Regan.
“I’m really grateful Amy went into this process with an open mind and not just looking for an old friend,” Regan said. “I benefited from that. I’m really taken aback by the way she took that approach because it obviously helped me.”
Berbary said she was hooked on Regan by the time she first hung up the phone after talking to him. There was something about his positivity and forward thinking attitude that Berbary said peaked her interest from the beginning.
After having dinner with Regan along with assistant coach Sergio Gonzalez and academic advisor Eileen O’Rourke, Berbary said she knew Regan was the hire she wanted to make.
“When we walked away, we were all like, ‘Wow,’” Berbary recalled. “He was even better in person than the phone interview.”
After finishing out interviews, Berbary gave Regan a call and offered him the job. She told him he’d have a few days to think about it and that she was in no rush.
Regan stopped her right there. He didn’t apply just to let the adventure slip away.
He took the job immediately.
***
Regan joined Indiana’s staff officially on Jan. 19. By the time March rolled around, Berbary turned to him one day and said, “Mike, it feels like you’ve been here forever.”
He wasn’t having it.
“It’s been six weeks, Amy,” he deadpanned.
The transition onto the staff, by all counts, was seamless.
“He fit right in,” Gonzalez said. “It was almost like he’s been here for years rather than months.”
The majority of Regan’s work is done alongside Berbary where his primary duty is to develop the offense through the midfield and forwards. Gonzalez takes care of the goalkeepers and the back line of defense.
“It was exactly the type of situation I was looking for,” Regan said. “To be able to learn alongside Sergio and Amy was a perfect situation for me.”
Regan says he has two fundamental jobs as a coach: Build relationships with your players and make sure they’re better off when they leave. He rarely gets angry, his players say, and he’s always quick to lighten the mood after mistakes.
“The second he sees us getting down on ourselves, he steps in,” sophomore forward Maya Piper said.
Said junior forward Kayla Smith: “What stands out to me is what he does off the field. It’s just the little things like asking how are days are or what we think about things. It matters.”
Regan still hasn’t experienced all of Indiana yet. He’s still navigating his first season with a team that has one-third of its roster made up of freshmen. There’s going to be mistakes and growth along the way both with the players and him, he said.
But that’s why he got into coaching.
Adventures aren’t meant to be easy.
“I wouldn’t have moved my family if I didn’t think I could make an impact, but two, I knew I could really learn with this program,” Regan said. “There’s still so much more I can do here, and that’s the exciting piece of it all.”
