Coaching Roots - John Higgins Journey from Scotland to Xavier
Laurel Pfahler for GoXavier.com
4/5/2022
John Higgins didn't know it at the time, but following his dad around at his various jobs with the local semi-professional soccer team helped prepare him for his own path as a head coach.
The newly hired Xavier men's soccer coach grew up in Dunfermline, Scotland, and his uncle coached the semi-pro team in town. Higgins' father, also named John Higgins, helped out in different capacities ranging from athletic trainer to assistant coach, and that meant the younger John Higgins spent much of his time around the team.
Years later, Higgins realizes that experience was something that shaped him in his own playing career and likely played a factor in his quick transition into head coaching at a young age. Higgins was still finishing his Master's degree at the University of Indianapolis when he was tapped as the Division II-UIndy men's soccer interim head coach. After 12 successful years there, he is moving on to a new challenge with Xavier.
"I was really fortunate as a young kid, my dad worked at the semi-professional level so I was around the game a lot as a kid. I was in a lot of locker rooms and listened to coaches. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was an unbelievable experience for me to have in terms of just picking up these instincts and habits and listening to coaches and watching them work. I didn't realize I was doing it at the time. It was a great schooling for me there."Coach Higgins, Xavier Men's Soccer
Higgins originally had aspirations to play professionally and seemed to be on a good path while coming up through the youth system of Scottish Premiership side Celtic FC. At age 14, he was part of winning a youth national championship, but after finishing high school, he signed with the local club, Dunfermline Athletics, to be closer to home.
When a pro contract never came to fruition, he decided to attend college in the United States and landed in Indianapolis, where his grandfather's cousin resided. He was 20 then, old for a freshman, but he played for the Greyhounds from 2004-08 and earned all-conference and all-region honors as a senior. He was named to the 2007 CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District 5 Team and earned Academic All-GLVC honors four times.
Higgins had struggled adjusting to the game on turf in college and dealt with Achilles injuries. He had played as an aggressive, box-to-box midfielder in Scotland, but with the injuries, he lost a bit of his tenacity and pace and transitioned into more of a creative attacking midfielder with UIndy.
Although some internationals have transitioned into professional careers in the U.S. after college, Higgins knew then his playing career was coming to an end as his game slowed down. Higgins earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from UIndy in May of 2008, and he was hired as a graduate assistant while pursuing a master's degree in curriculum and instruction, which he received from UIndy in 2010.
"I kind of knew at that point I wanted to get into coaching. I picked up a few injuries in my time as a collegiate player and I was an education major. I always felt like being an education major was really good for me in learning how to be a coach, and when I took the graduate assistant position there at UIndy, that was really a big turning point for me. I got a real taste for it, then realized that was something that came very natural to me, something I really enjoyed."Coach Higgins, Xavier Men's Soccer
Three semesters into the master's program, Indy promoted him to interim head coach, at the age of 25, and he led the Greyhounds to their first conference tournament title game that year, in 2010, as the first-ever eighth seed to advance to the GLVC finals. UIndy removed the interim tag after that, and he became the program's winningest coach with a 150-56-29 overall record over 12 seasons.
Since then, he says he's never felt like he's worked a day in his life.
"Very solid start for a young guy," Higgins said. "I was very, very young to get the position. The athletic director at the time was a fantastic person and she showed a lot of faith in me. And I think I repaid that over the years with the success that we had at UIndy."
Higgins also attributes his early success to the time he spent coaching at the local U.S. Development Academy team called the Indiana Fire, which now is an MLS Next club. He coached the U-18 teams for about five years at the beginning of his time coaching at UIndy. He would run the Greyhounds' training sessions in the mornings and lead the D.A. practices in the evenings.
Former Xavier forward Jalen Brown, who was drafted by New York City FC in 2017, and Cameron Taylor, who was a defender for Xavier from 2014-18, both played for Higgins one year when the Fire were ranked third in the nation. Both have been in touch since he was hired at Xavier, and he enjoyed reflecting back on his experience coaching them and the D.A. program in general.
I felt like I got so much coaching experience from that and really kind of honed my craft at that time. It almost kind of helped me speed up my development process a little bit because I was coaching so much.Coach Higgins, Xavier Men's Soccer
Indiana Fire technical director Phil Presser said Xavier is getting a "phenomenal coach." He called Higgins "tactically sound" and noted his ability to watch a game and dissect it to figure out the strengths of the opponents and come up with an effective game plan.
Although Higgins was young starting out as a Division II coach and working with some elite prospects with the Fire D.A. program, he never looked out of his league, according to Presser. Higgins executes an entertaining style of play, Presser said, and understands how to get the most from his players.
"He understands the mentality and psychology of the player and when to speak up and when to stay low-key," Higgins said. "He's a coach players will fight for as opposed to be fearful of. He communicates to the individual and the team in a way that makes you appreciate and respect him as a coach.
"I've seen him in all conditions – winning, losing, winning by a lot, losing by a lot – and I've never seen him out of character, never lets his emotions get the best of him. When I first met him, he was a younger coach, but I would say he was mature beyond his years. He comes off as a professional coach that's been coaching at a high level 30-40 years."
Higgins drew from his playing experiences in Scotland as he developed his coaching philosophies and preferred style of play. The Scottish game, because of the cooler temperatures, is conducive to a high-press, quick game that requires good fitness, discipline and toughness, and Higgins found that those things lent themselves well to the college game, where teams can play at a fast pace and not wear down because of the ability to make unlimited substitutions.
That's how he plans to play with Xavier as well. He had his first training session with the team Wednesday and focused the entire time on the press.
"It was making sure that we've got a mentality that we're going to work harder than the opposition," he said. "I want to win the ball back as close to the opposition goal as possible. It's certainly easier to go and score if you only need to carry the ball, 15 yards, 20 yards versus starting from your own goalkeeper and building 80 yards or 100 yards. I want to play most of the game in the opposition half, whether we've got the ball or not, and certainly that is tied to the high pressing game that I like to play. But yeah, it's going to be high energy. It's going to be high press. We're going to force turnovers. I think we're going to be a really, really exciting team to watch on the counter attack once we're able to get those highlights."
Higgins said he's excited about the talent he has to work with at Xavier and looks forward to seeing how the group "flips that switch" to playing a bit tougher, more disciplined style of soccer.
For him, the transition to a new program is a new challenge he was ready to embrace when Associate Athletic Director for External Relations Brian Hicks approached him about the job opening. He had been thinking it was about time to try something new, and his visit to campus sold him on the move.
"It's exciting, that's for sure," Higgins said. "I certainly felt like at UIndy towards the end, as much as I loved it, I was kind of ready for a bit of a new challenge. I was very, very comfortable there. I don't like to be comfortable. It's not good to be comfortable. I'm normally a little uncomfortable and learning and getting better and I was kind of ready for that. Since I've been on campus, everybody's been super welcoming. I've not thought for one second, I've not regretted one second of being here. Probably one of the toughest things has been just jumping through a lot of kind of the administrative type things again, onboarding with the university … so it's made for some really, really long, long days. But I've loved it so far."
