When Pat Arney moved to the Rio Grande Valley and took a job at McAllen High School, he became the program’s first girls soccer coach.
That program, now a powerhouse, has accumulated 519 wins and 18 district titles under his 24-year stewardship.
With a 20-2 record this season, one that not only had extremely high expectations only to be cruelly cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, Arney has been named The Monitor All-Area Girls Soccer Coach of the Year.
Before Arney arrived in deep South Texas, the Stillwater, Minnesota native had sent his resume all throughout his hometown state “to some towns I had never heard of,” he said. Searching for a social studies teaching job, Arney said there was one available in Stillwater, but, “that’s the Twin Cities and there were 1,000 resumes.”
He had some friends in the Valley and his grandparents had been Winter Texans, so he was familiar with the area and found his job at McHi.
The year he arrived was the first year for girls soccer in the Valley.
Coincidence? More like fate.
Now he has a program that was ranked among the top five in the state this year, according to TopDrawerSoccer.com. The Bulldogs have three Division I commits on the team (with possibly more) and were focused on a deep playoff run. Senior goalkeeper and The Monitor’s All-Area Girls Soccer Player of the Year, Lexi Gonzalez, was also placed on the site’s “Watch List” for being among the best in the nation. She has announced her intention to play at perennial national power Arkansas.
He said that commitment was confirmed when two of his players — seniors Westyn Henderson (committed to Texas A&M) and Ava Alaniz (committed to Houston) — came to him one day and said they didn’t want to do conditioning in the afternoon, during a time when they would split conditioning and actual practice.
“They wanted to condition at 6 a.m. instead so they would have more time to practice on plays in the afternoon,” Arney said. “They were focused. This is what we have to do to get better.
“If you’re asking to get up an hour or 90 minutes earlier to run stadiums or do whatever, that shows a commitment level. The girls realize that it really matters. I’ve seen teams that have great talent and great potential but did things like go away for spring break and there have been years where we’ve won because somebody else didn’t care enough. For our girls it’s not, ‘I’ll play whenever,’ it’s, ‘These things matter.’”
The Bulldogs’ first and only girls soccer head coach remembers early in his career how he and other coaches would travel to the annual coaches clinic, held during and at the site of the state championship. He marveled while watching those teams play.
“Some of those teams would go five, six, eight or 10 deep,” Arney said. “We didn’t have that kind of depth. Now, I can sub people and we will run you down. We’ve been extremely successful and the girls buy into the goals and believe they are really important.”
Arney said the tradition of winning is something the program takes pride in. He said he also sees a greater commitment level with players wanting to be better.
“I have JV players that play club and can’t make the varsity because of our depth,” he said. “That’s them wanting to get better. They want that at an earlier age now. Learning and playing at a higher level is getting younger now.”
The 2018 Bulldogs became the first girls team from the Valley to ever to advance to the state semifinals. He said that team had girls who would play all over the country with their club teams. It’s something that was unheard of 20 years ago.
“It wasn’t too long ago that if you had three or four club players on your team, you were going to win district,” Arney said. “But when you have great players, they want that competitiveness. And great players want to go at each other. When our girls go after it when they are scrimmaging each other, that’s a great day, a great practice. The gloves come off and they start teasing one another but they go hard.”
Arney added that there’s no time to slow down and the goal remains getting better because there are teams across the Valley that want to set the same standard that McHi has grown into the past 24 years.
“I don’t now if people realize how good the Valley is with teams like Harlingen South and (La Joya) Juarez-Lincoln, which has improved by leaps and bounds, and McAllen Memorial and Los Fresnos and Edinburg Vela. It’s great to see that,” he said.
What else is great to see, Arney said, is that next year the Class 5A regional tournament will be held at McAllen Veterans Memorial Stadium. McHi, McAllen Memorial and McAllen Rowe all will be in Class 5A next year after UIL’s redistricting.
“I’m excited about next year. If we play our cards right, we could be playing in front of our home fans on our home field to return to state,” Arney said. “That would be unbelievably amazing, especially after playing teams like San Antonio Johnson and San Antonio Reagan on their home fields for the past 24 years. It’s a dream come true and a testament to how important the Valley is to soccer.”
Arney said he remembers telling the group of now seniors to “leave a legacy” during their freshman year.
“They’ve done that and more,” Arney said. “And it matters.”