McLachlan takes reins of ACC men’s soccer

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This article was published 30/01/2021 (1772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chris McLachlan just accepted a mighty challenge.

The Crocus Plainsmen boys’ soccer coach has agreed to take over the head coach job with the Assiniboine Community College men’s team.

“I didn’t even know about it and was contacted by members of the athletic department that pointed out the posting and wondered if I’d be interested,” McLachlan told The Sun.

“I’ve never really thought about getting a paid coaching job or anything like that, it wasn’t really on my radar. But then I got thinking about the opportunity to coach probably a lot of players I’d already coached in high school and thought that’d be a neat challenge.”

McLachlan, who teaches at Crocus Plains, guided the varsity boys’ team to its first-ever urban provincial medal in June 2019, as Thomas Romero scored an extra-time goal to win the third-place match 4-3.

The Plainsmen have certainly sported the best lineups in Westman high school soccer over the past few seasons under McLachlan’s watch. Of course, that comes without recruiting, which is the No. 1 challenge of running a post-secondary program.

Since the 2020-21 season was cancelled due to COVID-19 and most of ACC’s programs are one or two years, he’ll have a whole new group.

“It’s like a fresh opportunity. It’s a blank slate,” McLachlan said. “I’m hoping to point out to a lot of athletes even in Brandon high schools and some of the places we play about some of the programming available at ACC, and the chance to play soccer along with it.”

He still intends to coach at Crocus for the April to June schedule, with the MCAC calendar featuring an outdoor season from September to November and futsal in January to March. The bench boss sees a big opportunity to recruit his own guys, especially since a number of Crocus Plains programs translate well to Assiniboine ones.

“I’m hoping with me at ACC, that’ll give them a little more familiarity and they might be interested in trying that out,” McLachlan said.

The transition ends the Diego Rodriguez era with one win and one draw in three Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference seasons. Both came in the 2019 futsal season followed by an outdoor campaign in which the Cougars didn’t field a complete roster and forfeited every game.

ACC has never qualified for the post-season in the six-team league. But that would just make the turnaround sweeter.

“What I’m going to be looking to do at ACC is build in some of the things I value in my players at high school, which would be teamwork, being accountable to each other,” McLachlan said.

“There might have been problems with people showing up and fielding a team and a lot of that starts with having good practices, making sure your (athletes) are getting to practice on time and are ready to go so we can show we’re serious — yeah it’s going to be fun but we’re serious about building a program that’s going to be competitive with these other schools.”

The 2021-22 season is set to get underway in September, with Brandon University defending its 2019 title following the axed season.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity, trying something new and looking forward to seeing the level of play with these schools,” McLachlan said. “With how successful a lot of the athletes I’ve coached in the past have been in the MCAC, I’m definitely up to the challenge and looking forward to getting started.”

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