Minium: Angie Hind, Michelle Barr Rebuilt ODU Women's Soccer Into a Winner On and Off The Turf

Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – Angie Hind has built more than just a winning women’s soccer program at Old Dominion University, and under the 12^th-year head coach, the Monarchs are indeed winning big-time.

ODU is 45-23-13 and has won three conference titles in the last four seasons.

So far this season the Monarchs are 4-1-1, a record that includes victories over Maryland and then No. 20 Virginia Tech and a tie at nationally ranked Georgetown.

The Monarchs will seek to continue that fast start Saturday night at 6 when they host App State at the ODU Soccer Complex.

But there is so much more to this program than just success on the pitch. Hind’s program embodies everything college athletics should be about, from academics to sportsmanship to caring about others in the community to turning out young women who will have a positive impact on society.

In this age of NIL and the transfer portal, ODU rarely sees players transfer, and Monarch coaches spend little time perusing the portal.

When you come to ODU, you almost always stay.

“Never considered it,” said All-American defender Ashlynn Kulha when asked about the portal. She surely would have gotten a ton of looks had she entered the portal.

“I love it here. I couldn’t find what I have here anywhere else,” she added.  

The Monarchs go to class, make good grades and spend a ton of their off-time doing community service, be it mentoring youth soccer players, collecting food for the homeless or greeting Norfolk school children on their first day back at school.  

ODU ranked second nationally among the nation’s 341 Division I schools in total hours dedicated to community service in 2024-25.

Academically, ODU’s two dozen players combined for a 3.5 grade point average last year, and that means the average grade on this team was an A-. It was the highest GPA of any of ODU’s athletic teams.

And you won’t find anyone enrolled in easy degree programs. Gry Boe Thrysøe is working on her PhD in computational applied math. Erin Jones is working on her MBA and Katie McCormick a Master’s in ocean and earth science.

Laura Klebek is learning how to design and program video games. 

Three players are enrolled in biomedical sciences and others in biochemistry, criminal justice, biology, psychology, health services administration, literature, etc.

I could go on, but you get the picture. These young women aren’t just successful on the soccer field. They will have successful careers as productive citizens.

No one could have imagined ODU’s program at this level 12 years ago when Hind and Michelle Barr, now the associate head coach, came from Scotland and took over a program mired in mediocrity.

The women were coming off a 1-13-3 season in 2013. They hadn’t had a winning record since 2008.

“To think of how far we come in just a decade is miraculous,” said Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics. “Angie Hind has poured her heart and soul into that transformation. What she’s done has been amazing.”

The Kilmarnock, Scotland native had a blue-collar upbringing, and her team embodies that blue-collar spirit. She is exceedingly demanding on the field. She will scold her team if their effort is subpar in her distinct Scottish accent, but her players know when she’s yelling at them, she has their best interest at heart.

“She demands a lot from her players,” said Danielle Cohea, a senior associate athletics director who oversees the women’s soccer program.

“But the thing about Angie is that they know she cares about them as people, that she truly has their best interest at heart.”

“Yes, I do push my players,” Hind added. “But if I don’t push and challenge these girls, then I’m not giving them anything, you know?

“But we have a good balance. You have to have a good sense of humor.

“For me, that’s life. You want to be the best you can be. Why do something half-assed? Give everything and then reap the rewards and then keep working harder.

“But in the meantime, don’t forget that it’s alright to enjoy it along the way.”

Hind’s path to ODU took many turns. As a child, she was among only a handful of girls in her town to play soccer. She was encouraged by her father, Thomas Hind, to go out and play with the neighborhood boys.

“Not a lot of dads were doing that when I was a child,” she said. “He told me I was the son he never had.”

She would play all day until her mother Isabelle stood on the front porch and called her home.

“I didn’t know there was such a thing as women’s soccer until I was 11,” she said. “I played with the boys. I didn’t know there were girls teams.”

She figured it out pretty quickly, however, and wound up playing for the Scottish National Team -- she and Barr were teammates. After graduating from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland, she wanted to try her hand at coaching.

“But there were so few possibilities in Scotland,” she said. “It’s such a male-dominated sport there.”

She and some friends made a two-week trip to America to scout out possibilities here. 

Eventually, the connections she made led her to being hired as the assistant coach at Dartmouth. A year and a half later, she was named the head coach, and she and Barr – then an assistant – led the Big Green to a 54-38-8 record before returning to Scotland to coach for the national team.

“Whilst it was a fantastic opportunity to work at that level, I missed coaching full-time,” she said. “When you’re a national coach, you see your team every three weeks or so.”

When she learned about the opening at ODU, she contacted Virginia coach Steve Swanson, who was an old friend, to ask what he thought. 

“He told me that ODU was a sleeping giant, that the facilities were good and the area was great,” she said. “He urged me to go for it.”

She did and Selig hired her, with a huge dose of input from Deb Polca, when ODU’s senior women’s administrator.

“Deb did such a great job selling ODU,” Hind said.

Not that she really needed to be sold. She and Barr had vacationed together in Virginia Beach only a few months earlier. She loves the weather and beaches in Hampton Roads.

Before they shook hands on a contract, Hind remembers telling Polca: “If you’re looking for someone who’s going to change this program in a year, it’s not me, because that’s a quick fix. It’s a band aid.

“If you want to do something right, you’ve got to do it in a sustainable way. And that will take time.

"And she agreed with me.”

Progress came painfully slow.

Not until her fourth season, in 2017, did the Monarchs have a winning record (9-5-4).

Then, in 2021, all the work paid off. The Monarchs won the Conference USA title and lost a heartbreaker at No. 1 seed Duke, 1-0, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Successive Sun Belt titles came in 2022 and 2023 as ODU beat James Madison in the championship games both years.

ODU was 10-6-4 last season and fell in the semifinals of the Sun Belt Tournament to eventual champion JMU.

It was a bitter disappointment to Hind and her players, which speaks volumes to how far this program has come.

Barr has been with Hind for 25 years and has played an integral role in her success at both Dartmouth and ODU. Barr was a defender who played 84 international games for Scotland.

“There’s a reason that our defensive unit is so good, that our goalkeepers are so successful,” Hind said. “Michelle is a huge reason why we’ve won championships.

“You know, scoring goals wins games but shutouts win championships.

“Michelle has invested so much in our players, and they know that.”

So has Hind. She spends many hours with her players, on and off the field. She maintains relationships with former players.

“She really cares,” said Amy Lynch, ODU’s director of student athlete services and community engagement, who serves as the women’s soccer academic advisor.

“When she asks one of her players how they are doing, she really wants to know. And she will do anything she can to help them.

“That’s why her players love her so much.”

Hind and Barr have also involved the parents of players into the program.

After every home game, parents prepare meals for players in the courtyard just outside the locker room. When parents travel with the team, they often stay in an Airbnb together.

It’s all one big family, and that’s no accident. Family is important to Hind. The first thing she does after every game is text the score to her mother.

“It’s usually something like 3 a.m. there,” she said. “My Mom will tell my dad the score and then they will go to sleep.

“They used to come here three times a year. They’re not healthy enough to travel that much now. But they still love ODU soccer.”

Hind said there’s no real secret to how she rebuilt ODU women’s soccer – it’s all about recruiting.

“You want to get good players but I think we also have a pretty good eye for who’s not only going to make us better but who’s going to work for us,” she said.

“When you see how a kid plays, you get a sense for their personality, whether they’re going to be hard working. If they’re going to be a winner on the field, I think that’s going to be reflected academically. And then, it’s our culture. I know that word gets bandied about a bit, but it’s taken us a long time to get that right.”

Earlier this week, before the team left for an the locker room for an hour of conditioning, she spent half an hour doing team-building exercises with her players.

“We started off by saying, ‘Go stand next to someone you know the least on the team and talk to them.’”

She doesn’t allow cell phones in the locker room and during team meals so that her players focus on the right things.

“I guess that sounds a little old school, doesn’t it?” she said. “But I think what we’ve done here is working.

“I’m so appreciative to Dr. Wood Selig that he was so patient and allowed us to build the program in the right way.

"It took a long time and some athletic directors wouldn’t have been as patient. But Wood was patient."

And ODU has reaped the rewards. 

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram