Lehrer Continues Winning in First Season at Harvard

Throughout his soccer career, Pieter Lehrer has done nothing but win.

Over the course of his 14-year coaching tenure with teams like Stanford, Cal, and the Los Angeles Galaxy, Lehrer has won three Pac-12 championships, an MLS Cup, and an Open Cup. In addition, he has made five appearances in the NCAA Tournament and three in the NCAA College Cup.

Therefore, when Lehrer took the job as the head coach of the Harvard men’s soccer team last spring, he was entering uncharted territory. After posting back-to-back 0-6-1 records in the Ivy League in 2011 and 2012, Lehrer’s newly inherited Crimson had hit rock bottom.

“People were pretty frustrated,” senior co-captain Kevin Harrington said. “After three straight years of disappointment, it just gets tougher and tougher each year to pick yourself back up and put yourself on the right track.”

Lehrer immediately got to work. Just days after receiving the job, the coach packed his bags for Cambridge to begin overseeing Harvard’s offseason workouts. After the team surrendered 30 goals during the 2012 campaign, Lehrer made the defense his primary focus.

“Coming out of [last] season, things were very negative,” Harrington said. “The way that Coach Lehrer came in with a lot of energy and this absurd optimism really invigorated the program and got people hopeful again.”

Implementing his defense-first system proved to be a challenge as Harvard got off to yet another poor start, opening the season 1-6-2, but Lehrer still continued to show what one of his captains called “his undying commitment” to the team.

“I put everything I have into it, and I expect [the players] to put everything they have into it,” Lehrer said. “If [you] don’t want to put everything in, you’re in the wrong place. You should just be a regular student at Harvard.”

The players answered his call. Beginning with an upset win on the road against defending champion Cornell, the Crimson earned victories in six of their last eight games, missing out on the Ancient Eight title by just half a game. The team’s 5-2-0 Ivy League record was its best since 2009, the last time the Crimson won the crown.

This unforeseen success can largely be accredited to Lehrer’s affinity for analytics. The coach spent hours analyzing film and statistics trying to help his team gain a tactical advantage over the competition. As a result, Lehrer got what he was looking for in one area in particular—set pieces.

“I thought the difference maker this year was our set pieces,” senior co-captain Ross Friedman said. “We were constantly talking about the process of set pieces.”

Prior to the season, Lehrer found a study showing that corner kicks have a higher rate of success in producing goals when they are kept low. Friedman, Harvard’s primary taker of corners and free kicks, bought in to the advice and saw immediate results.

Sixty percent of Harvard’s goals this season came off set pieces, half of which came off corner kicks. In perspective, the Crimson scored more goals off set pieces (12) and corners (six) this year than in the last three seasons combined.

Furthermore, Harvard converted over six percent of their corner kicks into points this year. From 2010-2012, the team found the back of the net on less than two percent of these corners. Therefore, Lehrer’s excessive work helped stimulate over a tripling in scoring production.

“It’s really inspiring to see a coach who’s willing to just lay it all on the line and do anything to win,” Harrington said.

Lehrer’s desire to be the best can be traced back to his playing days. In 1984, his first year with the UCLA soccer team, Lehrer was named Bruin Rookie of the Year. One year later, he helped lead his team to an NCAA championship.

After graduation, Lehrer spent six years playing internationally. He played for teams from Italy, Austria, and Scotland, among others.

Nevertheless, despite all of his accomplishments on the pitch, the star’s greatest athletic feat has nothing to do with soccer. After being cut by the U.S. national soccer team in 1988, Lehrer set his heart on one thing—making it to the Olympics.

Initially, Lehrer figured that his best bet to become an Olympian would be through white water canoeing or kayaking. However, he struggled to find a good coach. That is, until he came across Andy Toro.

Andy Toro was a four-time Olympian who had represented both Hungary and the United States. At the time, he was a coach for sprint canoeing, which Lehrer admittedly knew very little about. Nonetheless, he decided to give it a shot with brother Jacob and sister Heidi.

“I said, ‘Andy we’d like to train with you,’ and he said, ‘I don’t train amateurs,’” Lehrer recalled.  “So we said, ‘Okay, no problem,’ and we kept showing up every day. He eventually took us on, and we just would progress and progress and progress.”

Lehrer quickly propelled himself into national contention. After a few years of training, the three siblings were confident in 1995 that they could qualify for the Olympics at the Pan-American Games.

But confidence swiftly turned to despair. In the middle of the race, the boat sank, leaving the Lehrers with only one remaining chance to qualify—the World Championships.

“[Andy] pulls us aside after the thing and we’re all crushed and he says, ‘You’ve got a one in five million chance of getting to the Olympic Games,’” Lehrer said. “I said to Andy, ‘You know, honestly, I like my chances.’”

However, Lehrer overcame the odds, and the team posted a personal best at the Championships. The performance was enough to send the Lehrers to the Olympics, the culmination of his taxing journey. Although the squad did not medal, Lehrer said the experience was a positive one.

“My most valuable skill set in my life [is] how I talk to myself when [things get] stressful,” Lehrer said. “I have a good internal dialogue to take me where I want to go when my mind is saying, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. It hurts too much.’”

Going beyond his job as a coach, Lehrer has utilized his own experiences to also serve as a mentor to his players. Immediately upon arriving in Cambridge, he installed an open-door policy, encouraging all his players to come talk to him about anything.

“A lot of my best memories with [Coach Lehrer] consist of my sessions in his office maybe not even going over soccer, but even more importantly my life goals and about what I want to do with my life,” Harrington said.

It is one thing to turn around a soccer team, but it is another thing to leave an impact on a group of players beyond the pitch. The transformation of the Harvard men’s soccer team under Coach Lehrer has officially begun.