Wiesner Does Double Duty at Cal Poly Pomona

As coach of the Cal Poly Pomona women’s soccer team the last six years, Brian Wiesner had grown accustomed to working long hours.

This season, however, his workload has increased significantly because Wiesner, 31, is coaching both the women’s and men’s teams.

Otto Rieger had coached the men for seven years until he retired after last season. When Wiesner approached Athletic Director Karen Miller with the idea of coaching both teams, she agreed.

“It’s becoming more and more prevalent throughout the NCAA,” Miller said. Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Hayward, San Francisco State and Sonoma State employ two-in-one soccer coaches.

Wiesner said schools have moved in that direction largely for financial reasons.

“As far as the economics of college soccer programs go, this is what has to be done,” he said. “. . . Soccer is usually not afforded the luxury of having two full-time coaches at one school, and I’m still not full time.”

Although he receives a part-time salary, Wiesner said the position demands a full day of work. So, before he assumed the additional responsibility, Wiesner consulted others serving in the same capacity, among them Marine Cano of Dominguez Hills.

“I did a little research on it, and the first thing I asked them all is if they were going crazy doing it like that,” he said. “I talked to Marine about it and the coaches at Hayward and San Francisco, and we brought up a lot of points.”

In agreeing to allow Wiesner to coach both teams, Miller specified several conditions. Most important, the teams would have to practice separately but would schedule as many doubleheaders as possible to avoid conflicts.

Wiesner has been successful in avoiding scheduling conflicts, for the most part.

There will be one, though, Saturday, when the women’s team plays at Southern Illinois Edwardsville at noon, and the men’s team plays at Northeast Missouri State at 4:30 p.m. in Kirksville, Mo.

Wiesner plans to go to the women’s game, then use a rental car to drive from Edwardsville, to Kirksville for the men’s game. Assistants Jose Ramirez and Joe Cropper will take the men’s team from their hotel in St. Louis to Kirksville.

“They say it takes about an hour to drive from Edwardsville to Kirksville,” Wiesner said. “If the noon game is over on time, I should be able to get to the (men’s) game with about an hour to spare.”

The only other potential conflict would have been at home on Oct. 27, when the men play Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the women play Metro State of Colorado. Wiesner persuaded Metro State to play at 5 p.m., before the men’s teams play at 7:30.

Aside from scheduling, Wiesner said the hardest part was working out the practices. Times have been staggered so that neither team gets preferential treatment.

“I’m on the field for at least four to five hours a day because we always like to give each team at least two hours of practice,” Wiesner said. “And on occasions, when we don’t have a game for a few days, we’re out there for six hours.”

It is even more complicated on game days.

“It’s like a roller coaster,” he said. “As soon as the first game is over, you have to get your mind focused on the next game, no matter what happens.”

Wiesner said there are different approaches to coaching the men’s and women’s teams.

“It’s a lot of shifting gears,” he said. “ . . . I find the psychological approaches are different. The teams do not play the same way, and you don’t treat them the same way. The teams are totally different entities.”

Wiesner credits his assistant coaches, Ramirez and Cropper for the men and Melissa Rogers for the women, with making the job easier.

The men are 0-2-1 and the women are 1-2.

“It has gone a lot smoother than people might think,” he said. “But right now it’s still early in the season, and we’ll see what kind of toll it takes on me.”

College Division Notes

Junior quarterback David Lafferty completed 16 of 32 passes for 342 yards and four touchdowns in his debut as a starter for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in a 48-13 victory over West Texas State at Canyon, Tex. . . . Azusa Pacific defeated Cal Lutheran, 41-13, with a 314-yard passing performance by quarterback Brian Hunt.