WOMEN'S SOCCER: VI tabs Stigers to lead reinstated program

Women’s soccer is on the way back at Virginia Intermont and the Cobras now have a new leader to take them the final step.

The school announced Friday that Katy Morrow Stigers, a former NAIA All-American goalkeeper for King College, will take over the restored program, which plans to begin playing games again in fall 2012 after a six-year hiatus.

Stigers will officially begin work in August and will have a year to assemble a team.

“It’ll be a sprint this year, but a good sprint,” she said.

Stigers was a member of the Tornado from 1998-2001 and graduated from King in 2002. During her 2001 senior season, she was the only women’s soccer player in the nation to be named an NAIA All-American for her efforts both on the field and in the classroom.

Although she went to high school in Georgia and has been in Atlanta the past several years working on her doctorate in political science at Emory University, Stigers said returning to Bristol will be a homecoming of sorts for her.

“I really enjoyed the Tri-Cities area, Bristol, just the whole area as a college student,” Stigers said. “I’m really excited to get to move back with my family. It’s not exactly like coming home, but in some ways it is. It’s a place I’ve always thought really high of.”

VI fielded a team only during Stigers’ last two years at King, but she recalled some intense battles with the Cobras.

“We felt like there was a rivalry,” she said. “Some of my friends that I played with in college have given me a little bit of ribbing” for taking a job at King’s crosstown rival.

Women’s soccer had a highly successful seven-season run at VI from 2000-2006 before the program was disbanded due to budget constraints before the 2007-08 school year.

The Cobras defeated Milligan – the defending Appalachian Athletic Conference – in their inaugural game back on Aug. 26, 2000, and the program was disbanded after reaching the NAIA national tournament in its final season following back-to-back 7-1 records in AAC play.

VI actually went as far as hiring a coach in 2008 in the hopes of fielding a women’s soccer team again in 2009, but only the men’s team ended up returning.

“We attempted to bring it back at the same time when we [re-]started men’s soccer and for a variety of different reasons that just didn’t work out the way we anticipated,” said VI athletic director Chris Holt.

This time, though, Holt said there should be no obstacles to the program’s return.

In addition to achieving a balance in the athletic department by adding a women’s team to match the men’s soccer squad, Holt said the school surveyed its students through its website and women’s soccer overwhelmingly won the vote for the sport most wanted to see added.

“In a lot of ways we’re listening to our students again,” Holt said. “We’re thrilled to have it coming back to campus.”

While the Cobras achieved their women’s soccer success in the early part of the 2000s with an internationally diverse roster, Stigers, who joined the King program as a player in just its second year of existence, said her first task this fall will be to scour the VI campus and the local area for players.

“One of the things I definitely need to do is find out locally, maybe people already on campus that have thought about being college athletes, college soccer players,” she said. “The first thing would be to beat the bushes close to home and find out if there’s diamonds in the rough.”

Stigers has coached a number of club soccer teams and also was an assistant coach at NCAA Division I Samford University in Alabama in 2002, but the VI job will be the first time she will lead a collegiate program.

She said the key to her coaching success will be getting tough-minded players on board who will buy into putting forth the effort it takes to build a program from the ground up.

“You can improve quickly if you’re recruiting well and the players are a good fit for the program,” she said.

Adding women’s soccer back onto its athletics menu is the latest indication that VI has begun to shake off its financial problems.

While he’ll give the reinvigorated women’s soccer program time to grow once it hits the field again in 2012, Holt said he’s expecting all of VI’s teams to soon be returning to the upper echelon of the AAC.

“I think our athletic program’s in a position where all of our programs should be moving forward,” Holt said. “Our goal is to be in the top three in our conference in all our sports.”

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