Adam Howarth has worn many hats during his lifetime.

He was a college soccer player, an international student, a high school coach, a high school teacher and a soccer referee.

He is a husband, a father of three, a professor of physical education and a mentor to hundreds of young men who have passed through his life.

But for the last 10 years, he has been the head coach of the Eastern men’s soccer team.

“It’s kind of funny,” Howarth said. “I ran into someone after one of our games that I used to referee with, this was before I started coaching, and he said ’10 years. I can’t believe it.’ I thought about it and that’s when it set in. It went really fast.”

Howarth, a 1993 Eastern graduate, has had a long journey from his native of Slough, England, to East-Central Illinois.

The journey began before college. Howarth said he was looking for a scholarship and he did everything to get his name out there.

He had an uncle who played professional soccer in Wichita, Kan. His uncle passed along Howarth’s information to other players who passed it along to Eastern head coach at the time, Cizo Mosina.

“I ended up getting a little bit of a scholarship and later I got one for academics,” Howarth said.

Assistant coach Dino Raso was a teammate of Howarth’s at Eastern and said he was a great all-around athlete.

“He was an extremely hard worker. Tenacious, skilled on the win and I remember he even played a little bit of defense,” Raso said. “He could also score goals.”

Raso said Howarth was an orginzed player and is as a coach as well.

Howarth said he did not think he was the best player during his time at Eastern.

“I think, or else I hope, that the people that make good coaches were the ones who were not the best players on their team,” Howarth said.

Howarth originally got into journalism at Eastern and worked with The Daily Eastern News.

However, he found writing and playing simultaneously difficult, so he decided to take up teaching.

Howarth graduated with a double major in history and journalism.

He then decided to stay in the area and went to coach and taught at St. Anthony’s High School in Effingham.

After his stint in Effingham, his stars aligned.

He returned to Eastern to work with the women’s soccer team as an assistant.

A year later, the men’s soccer coach decided to leave the program.

Howarth applied for the job and after the interview process was hired as the seventh coach of the program in July, 2000.

“I was a coach for a women’s team that won the conference,” Howarth said. “I hope, and others thought that I had a part in that. Lucky for me I was in the right place at the right time.”

Things got off to a great start for Howarth. Really great.

In his first game as a Division I head coach, the team won 6-1 including a goal in the first 15 seconds and a 3-0 lead 15 minutes into the game.

“A guy asked me at the end of the game, ‘It’s your first game, you win 6-1. How do you feel?'” Howarth said. “I said ‘I had a dream last night and it wasn’t that good.'”

The team finished 12-6-1 that year.

Howarth has said since then the program has had some ups and downs, but said the last few years have been mostly ups.

Under Howarth, the team has a 73-89-18 record.

The team has qualified for the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament in each of the past four seasons.

He said the difficulty is the schedule the team plays year in and year out in the Missouri Valley Conference.

“We have a good game here and a bad game there, but we feel confident we can go into any game and get a result,” Howarth said.

“That has always been my philosophy, as soon as I do not think I can win a game I will get out.”

Raso said he sees similarities with how Howarth coaches to how he used to play.

“He is completely organized,” Raso said. “So he wants the most out of the guys and in that sense you can see some of the tenacity and aggressiveness come out through that.”

It has been a long journey from the western suburb of London to the cornfields of east-central Illinois, but Howarth knows where he will be 10 years from now.

“I see myself chasing my kids around,” Howarth said. “I’ll be attending a lot of their sporting events. My one son will be 16, the other 11, so they should be on the verge of getting pro contracts. My daughter, she’ll be doing one of those things or maybe she’ll be getting ready for college to become a doctor somewhere.”

Dan Cusack can be reached at 581-7944 or dscusack@eiu.edu.