Indy Eleven’s Tim Hankinson Named NASL Coach of the Year
Tim Hankinson has earned NASL Coach of the Year honors after leading Indy Eleven to the championship match of the NASL playoffs. Indy hoisted the NASL Spring Season title with a 4W-6D-0L record, as they prepare to take on Fall Season winners New York Cosmos this Sunday.
Related Article: NASL Championship Stage Set
NASL Soccer News: Indy Eleven’s passionate fans have a new hero in coach Tim Hankinson, who in his first year in charge at Carroll Stadium led the third-year club to his first playoff berth and has been named the 2016 North American Soccer League (NASL) Coach of the Year.
Introduced as the club’s second head coach, on December 2nd, 2015, Hankinson led an impressive turnaround for the Boys in Blue. With Hankinson at the helm, Indy embarked on a path to include a number of strong veterans into the squad and to bolster an attacking side that last year came to depend on scoring from the midfield. Over the course of the NASL Spring Season, Indy notched a 4W-6D-0L record, capturing the Spring Season title on a tiebreaker over the New York Cosmos. The club knocked off FC Edmonton, 1-0, on November 5th to reach The Championship Final versus reigning champs New York Cosmos.
“Awards come with many layers to it,” Hankinson said. “I look at the front office; our ownership; our general manager and president – the support they’ve given us; my technical staff – guys like Tim Regan, who has coached in this league all three years, he’s been here; as well as medical and other people behind the scenes; and the players.
Hankinson grew up in Manhattan and started playing soccer on the fields of New York City’s Central Park. He went on to have a successful coaching career in college that began at Oglethorpe University at age 34 (and later continued at Alabama A&M, DePaul and Syracuse), and then leading teams in Iceland, India, and Jamaica.
Hankinson has also coached in the USL and MLS. In 2011, he became the first coach of the NASL’s San Antonio Scorpions, and remained with the club through the 2013 campaign. He then was a coach of Montego Bay United in Jamaica, a club from which he signed forward Omar Gordon on loan this year, and then to Indianapolis.
“It’s all of the ingredients coming together and finding that consistency, from the start to the finish, which is what an award like that is about,” Hankinson added. “It’s not just me.”
Previous Winners
2011: Manny Lagos (NSC Minnesota Stars)
2012: Ricky Hill (Tampa Bay Rowdies)
2013: Brian Haynes (Atlanta Silverbacks)
2014: Manny Lagos (Minnesota United)
2015: Marc Dos Santos (Ottawa Fury FC)
Photo Credit: North American Soccer League
