The Justice

Mike Coven, left, instructs the Judges during halftime of last Tuesday's win over Lasell. David Sheppard-Brick/the Justice

After the captains of Mike Coven's 1984 men's soccer team overrode his game plan in a late-season loss at Babson College-spoiling an undefeated season, Coven walked off the field in fury and never stopped. Nine miles later, he was back at Brandeis, showing just how passionate he was about that game.

Such antics, however, have become fewer and further between for Coven, who in his 35th year at Brandeis became the 10th Division III soccer coach to reach 400 career victories last Tuesday night when the Judges defeated Lasell College 1-0. Now, the man who says he used to get in players' faces calls himself laid-back.

"You won't see me screaming at the kids," Coven says in his office Wednesday afternoon. "I'll never do anything during the course of the match to embarrass an individual player."

Coven's temper is not the only thing that hasn't withstood the test of time. Also gone are the pink pants Coven says he wore on the sidelines in the 1980s, not to mention the bright green ones he donned at the Judges' 1976 Division III championship game victory.

"I think they were outlawed," Dickie Ellis '82, one of 12 former Coven players who attended his 400th win, says of the pink pants.

Still, during the Lasell game Coven showed he hasn't lost his trademark humor, even during the tense contest. After Judges' forward Ben Premo '09 complained to a referee, Coven remarked, "Just be quiet and play the game." When Premo responded that he wasn't saying anything, Coven joked "I wasn't talking to you."

Later, when a referee told Coven he can't see him over assistant coach Gabe Margolis, Coven turned to Margolis and says, "You're fired."

"We're always goofing around," Premo says. "Every time we are around coach Coven, it's pretty much a good time. We play better when we are having fun."

Brandeis men's soccer before the Coven era, however, was also laughable. The Judges would consistently win just one or two games per season, as the team was mainly composed of Wien Scholars, international students on full-tuition scholarships who didn't devote sufficient time to soccer, Coven explains.

In desperate need of better recruiting for its soccer program, the University turned to Coven, at the time a 24-year-old coach at Newton South High School. Coven says he was shocked to get the job, and credits his hiring to a connection with Brandeis' athletic director at the time, Nick Rotus, a former football and basketball coach at Coven's alma mater, American International College in Springfield, Mass.

Continued...

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