WU’s Regan Coaches Final College Game
39-year coach defeated son, rival WLU 2-1 Saturday
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WHEELING -- After a 39-year tenure, Wheeling University's Jim Regan coached his final college soccer game Saturday evening when the Cardinal men defeated rival West Liberty 2-1 at Bishop Schmitt Field.
The game would have been emotional for Regan no matter what, but the contest was even more special given that the opposing coach for the Hilltoppers was Jim's own son, Sean Regan.
"From the perspective of a retiring coach, I guess it's good to go out with a win against your son," Jim said. "It was a pretty emotional day overall. With the event of it being my last game there were a lot of alumni in town and a lot of my friends in the community were there. It was really a great day altogether."
Since Sean took the West Liberty job in 2019, it was the fifth time that the two Regans had coached against one another, but just the second time the father had beaten his son.
"To play against him the past three years was always a neat experience," Sean said. "Yesterday was very emotional. I wanted to win the game but it was great to see him win his final college game."
Sean said it almost felt like no one was rooting for his team to win Saturday.
"(My five-year-old son) had a Wheeling Jesuit Cardinals t-shirt on last night," he said. "I had nobody supporting me from my family last night."
"Even his own kids were split down the middle," Jim laughed. "All of the (Wheeling) alums know Sean because he grew up around them and was hanging out with them when they were college players. He said when he walked up they were all booing."
Saturday's game was tied at 1-1 in the second half until Daniel Skarpnes netted his third goal of the season in the 46th minute to put the Cardinals ahead for good. Jim said the reality of it being his last game did not hit until the final buzzer.
"It hit me once the game was over and Sean and I embraced in a big hug," he said. "That's when I really felt it. It was emotional, I knew it was coming but at the same time it was final. During the warm up, I was standing at midfield and looking at my team and just got real emotional. It brought a tear to my eye and I thought 'this is really it, this is the last time that I'll experience this as a coach'."
Droves of former players and alumni were in attendance to see Jim's last game and celebrate his career.
"We've always had a very tight alumni group as far as the soccer programs are concerned," Jim said. "It's just a real family atmosphere. It was a fantastic feeling and a great event."
Jim Regan grew up in Northern Ireland and immigrated to the Toronto area of Canada in the 1970s, where he played high school and club soccer. When it came time to head off to college, Regan came to the states and played at nearby Bethany College. Upon graduating, Regan spent a year with the Bison as a graduate assistant coach and then took over as the coach at then-Wheeling College in 1983. Regan founded the women's program at Wheeling in 1988 and coached both squads until 2002.
He compiled more than 500 career wins and has already been properly honored for his career, being inducted into the Wheeling University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Bethany College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.
Soccer and family have always been tightly woven together for the Regans. Jim's wife, Jill coached girl's soccer at Linsly for a time and all four of their children, Sean, Brandon, Kyle and Danielle, all played college soccer at Wheeling. While Sean is coaching at West Liberty, Brandon is also a college coach, working as an assistant for the women's team at division-I Robert Morris in Pittsburgh.
"It's just nice to see that they're giving back and they love the sport as much as I did," Jim said. "They all played from when they were six-years-old all the way through (college).
"Sean's always had a passion for it," he continued. "Even when he was young and playing soccer, he'd always want to come and sit on the bench with me. Kyle and Brandon would be running around but Sean would always want to come and sit on the bench and be a part of that with the players and look at the game. I knew he had a special passion for it."
"He was my inspiration to become a soccer coach," Sean said of his father. "I've been coaching now for 15 years and I learned everything from him."
As the coach of the men's team, Regan coached all three of his sons during their college careers.
"It probably put more pressure on them, having their father as a coach," he said. "I felt those three boys had some pressure during those years at Wheeling because the other players were going to look at them and wonder if their dad was going to give them any special treatment."
Sean agreed that it was a tough position to be in.
"He was a little harder on me. I never got it any easier, that's for sure," he laughed. "The players were always looking to me to be the middleman whenever we were getting in trouble in college.
"It was a very, very unique experience because you do see it at the youth level and the high school level, but when it's the collegiate level, where results matter and it's people's jobs and livelihoods, you have to be a good player as well. I just had to work that much harder because I didn't want that stigma of 'he's only playing because he's Jimmy's son' or anything like that."
While it was challenging to balance being both a college coach and a father at the same time, Jim said coaching his sons also gave him the opportunity to see their passion for the game he loved.
"Brandon just grew into (coaching)," Jim said. "The passion to coach just grew from when he was a player. It's very neat and it's special to see that some of them are doing the same. I don't know if their careers will be as long as mine was, but God willing I hope they are."
Danielle was the only child Jim did not have the chance to coach at Wheeling, as he had already given up the reins of the women's program by the time she enrolled.
"She'll still say 'Dad, why didn't you stay on?'," Jim said with a chuckle. "Back then when I was doing both, we did a lot of doubleheaders and I could just go from one (game) to the next. The conferences started to split and go in different directions to where there weren't doubleheaders anymore. And so I couldn't go to the women's game without the men suffering and vice versa."
Following his playing career, Sean started coaching right away. Ironically enough, his first head coaching job came at his father's alma mater, Bethany.
"It's ironic that I went to Bethany and coached at Wheeling and Sean went to Wheeling and coached at Bethany," Jim said. "I was proud that he took over a program there that I had played for. We knew the first thing we had to do was play a game against each other whether it was an exhibition or in the regular season."
Then when Sean was hired at West Liberty three years ago, no one was more pleased than his father.
"I knew it was a perfect fit for him," Jim said. "He's going to stay here in the valley and raise his kids here. It all kind of fell into place for him and it was great for me because we would have a lot more close contact."
While coaching his sons was a challenge, coaching against his son presented its own hurdles. Both men said they are very competitive and wanted to win, but at the same time neither necessarily wanted to see the other lose.
"It's an interesting dynamic," Jim said. "We're both competitive people and the nature is that you want to win, even though it's your son. I think it's tougher on my wife than it was for me. She's a West Liberty grad too."
"For that 90 minutes that we're on the field we're not father and son, we're enemies," Sean said. "It can be weird at times, it can be heated, but as soon as the matches end it's back to being normal. Whether he wins or I win, we're happy for each other."
The decision to retire after this season was not an easy one for Jim, but with all of his kids now married and with eight grandkids, he thought it was getting to be about time to step away.
"I'm going to be 65 in the summer and it's been 39 years," he said. "I've got eight grandkids now and our kids are all married. That part of life just hit, we thought we should, at some point, just enjoy life. I've never experienced a fall in 39 years, I've never even seen a big time football game because I've always been coaching. Everything came together and it was just right."
Jim said he is looking forward to doing some traveling, spending time with his grandchildren and watching some soccer matches he can actually enjoy.
"I need a little bit of a break right now," Jim said. "A little bit of a break to relax and not worry about wins and losses. Eventually I'll be watching the grandkids play and I'll be able to watch a soccer game without worrying what the result is. Even here, I'll be watching (Wheeling) games, I'll watch Sean's games and it'll be different because I won't have to worry about whether I'm going to win the game or lose the game. I might be able to enjoy the games a little bit."
While Jim will no longer be roaming the sidelines at Bishop Schmitt, Sean thinks his legacy will last for a very long time.
"He was one of the founders who started young soccer in Wheeling and he became the forefront at (Wheeling University)," Sean said. "To see a small university like Wheeling grow into a national soccer powerhouse, it put Wheeling on the map. We were getting guys from all over the world to come to Wheeling to study at a fantastic university and to play soccer. I think putting the little town of Wheeling on the global map, education-wise, is what he's most proud of."
And with so many grandkids, maybe it won't be so long until Jim finds himself coaching a team again.
"I don't think he's going to give up coaching altogether," Sean said. "I think he might coach my five-year-old son's team just for a little laugh."
"Definitely somewhere down the line I think I'm going to be roped into coaching the grandkids for sure," Jim added.