Brad Norton plans on making his return to the soccer sidelines a good one.

Norton was announced as the Mexico girls soccer head coach on June 18 in a Facebook post by the Mexico High School Athletic Department. He will take over a program that won its most games in five years last season.

Norton said he looks forward to leading a program that was in good hands the last three years with head coach Sarah Olson and assistant coach Sam Hobbs. 

“I am excited to get back into coaching,” Norton said. “You have the objective to take what coach Olson and coach Hobbs did and continue to build upon it. I see a lot of potential with this team.”

Norton moved to Missouri from Utah before last season and has a family who includes his wife, Mandy, and six children. Three are attending school in Mexico, including Zoey, who played her junior season with the Lady Bulldogs on Chris Hotop Field.

While Norton said he hasn’t coached soccer in about eight years, most of his overall coaching experience of more than a decade covers soccer. Norton has coached basketball and football in his life and has experience playing soccer, basketball, football, baseball, and track and field. He will be making his high school coaching debut after coaching travel soccer previously.

“It’s a different beast from competitive soccer,” Norton said. “You have different types of players and different types of challenges you’re dealing with. I’m not new to the high school scene having played sports in my youth, but I also have six kids — five of them have been in high school up to this point and three of them have graduated and been involved in all sorts of sports.”

Competitive soccer is “highly competitive” soccer that takes place year-round, Norton said. He averaged head coaching two teams, but he said he was coaching four different teams at one point. 

“You’re doing slightly different levels and slightly different age groups so the abilities are slightly different,” Norton said. “The older they get, at least in competitive soccer, they know what they’re doing. They’re kind of on autopilot.”

Norton would like to reach a range of girls in high school because one of his main goals is to increase numbers in the program. He said he would love seeing girls with soccer experience before high school and also girls without soccer experience, including some who play in other sports. 

When he was growing up, Norton was a multi-sport athlete so he knows the benefits firsthand. He likes having multi-sport athletes as a coach because skills translate across sports and it’s about more opportunities to have fun in high school.

“For example, we take soccer and basketball,” Norton said. “In basketball, you’re learning how to play defense — breaking down a player and you’re just trying to stay in front of them. You can translate that into soccer when you’re challenging somebody for the ball — not stabbing at a ball and letting them get by you but breaking them down and trying to stay in front of them.”

Soccer is a “constant change in pace” as it pertains to conditioning, Norton said. Players can run miles during matches to ultimately improve their conditioning for other sports. 

Norton said he plans to extend invites to kids in the future for them to try soccer. For the girls already in the program, he said would like to immediately set up time in the weight room with strength coach Devon Scott and open fields with Bill Gleeson and the boys soccer team. He said he would also like to set aside some time to get to know the girls and for them to become acquainted with him.

Mexico can pick up where it left off a season ago, Norton said, and hopefully secure more than last year’s seven victories. The Lady Bulldogs were 4-3 in one-goal games. Now that  Norton is taking over, he said he wants to focus on some areas to keep trending upward.

“I want to focus on girls being vocal and communicating with each other on the field,” Norton said. “Being aggressive with a ‘first-to-the-ball’ mentality and winning the ball out of the air so you get the team on their heels as opposed to being knocked back on your heels. Also, you’re playing quick — not holding on to the ball and moving it in space. That’s part of playing smart and playing as a team.”