Introducing Mark McKeever
The 2021 USL League Two Coach of the Year will lead One Knoxville during its inaugural season this summer.
Mark McKeever, who led the Des Moines Menace to the USL League Two title in 2021, in front of the site of the future stadium in Knoxville’s Old City. All photos by Michael Hutcheon of Big Slate Media.
The first contact from the club came in August.
That same month, Mark McKeever, a Scotland native with two decades of coaching experience at the college and amateur levels in the United States, was named the USL League Two Coach of the Year after leading the Des Moines Menace to the national title.
Days before the announcement, One Knoxville had held an event at The Mill and Mine debuting the club’s crest and colors. Anticipation was high. Among the next questions was: who’s going to lead this project on the field?
“We’re trying to build a community oriented club,” says Drew McKenna, a member of the club’s ownership team. “Something everyone around town feels connected to and wants to be a part of. But we know winning amplifies everything. If you can win, you can be more effective.
“If you’re starting a League Two club and you want to win, Mark is the first name on the list.”
At Young Harris College, where he’s spent 17 seasons as the men’s head coach, McKeever has led the team to six conference and five league championships, five NCAA Division II Tournament Sweet 16 appearances, and two Elite 8 appearances. In 2021, Young Harris went undefeated in the regular season, winning both the Peach Belt Conference league and tournament championships. As a League Two head coach for the past six seasons, McKeever has collected division and conference titles, culminating in last year’s national title win with the Menace.
McKenna knew persuading him to leave the defending champions was going to take quite the pitch. So he didn’t just invite McKeever to be a part of creating a legacy of professional soccer in the city. He offered him the reins.
“He’s not inheriting anybody else’s program,” McKenna says. “Everything we do from a technical perspective is what Mark thinks is right. That’s not just the first team. That is full technical autonomy over who makes the roster, the youth teams and whatever may come in the future of the club.”
It didn’t take much more convincing for the hook to set. Within weeks of their first conversation, McKeever had already sketched out potential rosters.
“It’s the perfect job in a city that is crying out for something to hold onto in the soccer community,” McKeever says.
“I want to build something that will last a long time. And that’s not down in two or three seasons. It’s done over decades. I want to be embedded in the city. In 25 years time, I’d love for the people in Knoxville to be talking about how this team started, the direction it went, and who was responsible for taking it in that really positive direction. Only time will tell.”
The Nitty Gritty
McKeever’s contract is guaranteed through the 2022 season, which will see One Knoxville compete in the League Two’s Southern Conference. On January 18, the league will announce the club’s divisional alignment for the season. Currently, the conference consists of three divisions: Deep South, Southeast, and South Atlantic.
Also debuting as an expansion team in 2022 are Tennessee Soccer Club, the state’s largest competitive youth club, based just outside of Nashville.
The expectation, from the club ownership down to McKeever—what he’ll seek to instill in the players he’ll begin bringing in at the end of January is straightforward: win the league and begin the professional phase of the club’s story in USL League One as soon as 20231.
“Mark wants to be a professional soccer coach and we want to be a professional soccer club,” McKenna says. “The contract is structured in a way so that once we enter professionalism he’ll be the coach that brings us there.”2
McKeever will enter open tryouts, scheduled for January 29, with a list of nearly 70 players already on his radar. Because of the nature of League Two—a three-month summer league that begins at the end of the college season and occurs in the middle of the country’s professional league seasons—he plans to carry both “A” and “B” squads. About 40 players—a mix of the best college Division I, II, and NAIA and lower-league professional players in the country (All-Americans, Conference Players of the Year, current pros in the USL Championship and League One who are out of contract with their clubs)—will sign contracts. There will be an opportunity for the area’s best local players to join for One Knoxville’s inaugural season.
“Everyone we’re bringing in we feel has a chance to be a professional in the USL Championship, League One, or the MLS,” McKeever says. In the 2022 MLS SuperDraft, held earlier this week, three players who he coached last year with the Menace were selected: Sivert Haugli for the Portland Timbers, Kingsford Adjei for New York City FC, and Reshaun Walkes for Toronto FC.
McKeever has an affinity for creative players. His preferred style will recall memories of the Pep Guardiola Barcelona sides of 2008–2012.3
“Our stamp is going to be trying to win the game with us having the dominance, the ball, the opportunities, as opposed to setting out to try to stop our opponents,” McKeever says.
“If there’s a chance to win 1-0 or 4-3, I’ll take the 4-3. I want my team pressing high up the field, scoring goals.”
But, there’s a million ways to win in soccer, and McKeever knows it.
“The preference is to play nice, flowing, sexy soccer,” he says. “But we won’t be one dimensional.”
Joining McKeever in Knoxville will be longtime assistant Dean Grey, who has spent 10 seasons coaching beside him at Young Harris and was a member of the Menace’s title-winning staff. McKeever is looking to add a goalkeeping coach and one or two others to support him in some capacity.
So, Who is Mark McKeever?
First and foremost, he’s a man in love—or, rather, a man obsessed, depending on how you feel about the beautiful game.
“Soccer is the pinnacle and the whole being of my life,” McKeever says. “Obviously, when you’re married and have children, they become your priority. But soccer has been my life since I’ve been able to walk or breathe.
“My granny brought me a soccer ball for my third birthday. At that point, it became the biggest part of my life, and it has been for the rest of my life.”
In Motherwell, where he lived until leaving for the U.S., that meant Celtic Football Club. “I’ve been a Celtic supporter since 1888,” he says, laughing4. In 1995, as a youth player for Scottish Championship club Hamilton Academicals, McKeever played in a friendly against the Glasgow side, one of the two most successful and popular clubs in his country, as they prepared for a Scottish Cup match.
“I got to play against players who were legends of the club,” says McKeever, a former No. 9. “I was on the same team as Paul Hartley, who went on to play for and captain Celtic. And they had five or six first-team players: Brian O’Neil, Simon Donnelly, Gordon Marshall. I was watching them every weekend.”
In 1997, McKeever left for Texas on a sports scholarship. He played first at Tyler Community College then transferred to Christian Brothers University, where he captained one of the most successful teams in men’s program history. In 2000, he was named the Gulf South Conference Player of the Year after leading the team to a conference championship and NCAA Regional appearance. It would be another decade before the men’s team won a conference title.
In 2001, McKeever graduated with a degree in psychology and was drafted fourth by the Nashville Metros for what was then the second tier of professional men’s soccer in the U.S. Before the season, the team lost a key sponsorship and informed him they couldn’t afford his wages. He ended up playing a season for the Memphis Express in the third tier before returning to play in Scotland.
Once back home, it didn’t take long for McKeever to realize his future was in coaching.
“The brand of football I was going to have to play in Scotland wasn’t enjoyable to me,” McKeever says. “It was ‘Route 1’ and back-to-front in the semi-pros. At that point, I decided that I would get more enjoyment giving players a chance to play the ‘right’ way as a coach than I would playing Route 1 football as a player.”
In 2003, McKeever returned to CBU, where he earned a master’s degree in education and served as an assistant coach for two seasons, winning the Gulf South Conference twice with the women’s team before joining Young Harris.
In his nearly two decades as the head coach of the men’s team, McKeever has transformed a competitive junior college program into one of the most successful Division II sides in the country. His overall record with Young Harris is 222-72-18 (143-29-11 in DII). His winning percentage in DII—81.2% after the 2021 season—is among the best in the country for active coaches.
But the college season is short—20 or so games, condensed between August and November. “I’m a football junkie,” McKeever says. “I need football in my life every day.” He was eager for an opportunity to build onto his college coaching experience and fill his summers—otherwise spent leading camps—with high-level competitive soccer.
In 2015, McKeever was named head coach of the Mississippi Brilla, a League Two side currently competing in the Mid South Division of the Central Conference. In four seasons with the club, he compiled a 28-14-15 record, led the team to two playoff appearances and a conference championship, and twice qualified them for the U.S. Open Cup—the third oldest cup competition in the world, open to all professional and amateur teams in the U.S. In 2018, the Brilla upset USL Championship side Indy Eleven, 1-0, to advance to the third round of the competition.
In 2019, McKeever left the Brilla for the Des Moines Menace. In two seasons at the helm, the team lost only three league games (his overall record was 27-3-1) and claimed their first national title since 2005. In the announcement of McKeever’s Coach of the Year selection, the Menace’s co-general manager Charlie Bales said: “Year after year, dozens of young men show up to Des Moines in May as strangers, come together collectively in pursuit of a common goal, and leave as brothers thanks to Mark’s management of the roster and it’s many personalities.”
When he’s not coaching, recruiting, or watching Celtic, McKeever is following his former players in professional leagues around the country5. He coaches his son’s club team, TYSA Mountain Dream Team, which evolved from a small group of mountain kids trying to play travel soccer for the first time to a competitive, trophy-winning team affiliated with the Triumph Youth Soccer Association out of Atlanta. The club, coincidentally, is sponsored by Celtic.
“I had nothing to do with it,” McKeever says, laughing. “But that was a dream, seeing them in a Celtic jersey and sending that picture to my dad.”
Beyond the ambition of the owners and the opportunity to carve a place for himself in local soccer history, McKeever’s motivation for taking the job in Knoxville stems from something else he noticed while coaching youth players. If kids are left without a hometown club to support, they’ll pick ones a thousand miles away. They’ll cheer for teams they’ll never watch in person. They’ll idolize players they’ll never run into at the grocery store or walking their labradoodle at the park on a Thursday afternoon.
“It’s something that’s missing in many cities across America,” McKeever says. “I’ll ask the players in my little academy team, ‘Who’s your favorite team'?’ And I hear Barcelona, Man United, Juventus. Then we play World Cup, and they want to be Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Italy. It’s like, Why don’t you want to be the United States? Why are you not supporting your pro teams here in this country?
“That’s where your identity has to start. I want the people of Knoxville to identify their soccer interests with One Knoxville. That would be my dream. To ask, ‘What team do you support?’ And straight off the bat they say, ‘One Knoxville.’ From there, you can branch off into the EPL and Serie As.”
Until the league kicks off in May, McKeever will be in Knoxville intermittently for club events. He plans to move in April and stay through the season, which will likely consist of a 14-game regular season (seven home, seven away) followed by playoffs. Once he’s here, expect McKeever to be present and working to connect with youth clubs and the greater Knoxville soccer community.
“I want to pull as many people in to create the biggest, strongest soccer culture that’s ever existed in Knoxville.”
What Didn’t Make the Cut
Here are a few questions I had for Mark that didn’t make the story, but that I think supporters will appreciate.
BGC: What do you love most about coaching soccer for a living?
MM: I enjoy that the highs and the lows. Even losing, you know. Losing is motivation for me. It’s something that really drives me forward. To make sure that I fix it. To give me something to chase. When I got the national championship ring, the week after it was irrelevant to me; it was gone. I want another one now.
So the biggest thing in my life is the next one that's coming up, and not the one that's gone previously. It’s a sport that allows you to evolve mentally. My brain’s always moving. I'm always learning.
Supporters pub Knoxvillians are most likely to find you at on a Saturday morning?
MM: Celtic (laughs). I’m not going to support any other team. I think what we need to do is start a Celtic supporter’s club in Knoxville. I can manage it. I’ll create it.
Player you’d sign tomorrow if money weren’t an issue?
MM: Kevin De Bruyne. I think he’s got a little bit of everything on him: plays both sides of the ball, very creative, can play a number of different roles. If he’s playing, I want to watch him play.
Soccer songs you’d encourage One Knoxville supporters to adopt?
MM: I’ll tell you favorite song. Celtic and Liverpool have the same one. When they play in Europe, they sing it together. So you get 65,000 people in the stadium singing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It gets the hairs on my arms standing up. But I think for those people who don’t support Liverpool, who go to all those different supporters pubs, I don’t think they’d appreciate it (laughs).
A goal sequence you’d have your players study?
MM: The goal that stands out is Maradona’s in 1986. That mazy run he had. There was a volley by Marco van Basten at the Euros in 1988. That one was a screamer.
The one that I hate most is Gascoigne versus Scotland in 1996. He played for Rangers at that point. So it was a double whammy.
Teams players can look at as a model of the style of soccer you’ll have One Knoxville play?
MM: The Barcelona side with Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Messi. That would be it. Pep’s Barcelona and Man City teams, Klopp’s Liverpool. That’s the style of football we’re going to try to play.
The USL League Two is considered a developmental or pre-professional soccer league (in other words, the players are not paid) and makes up the what would be considered the fourth division of competitive men’s soccer in the United States.
The U.S. soccer pyramid is complicated. If you’re used to traditional soccer league structures from Europe or Latin America, the pyramid would go: Major League Soccer (First Division), USL Championship (Second Division), USL League One (Third Division), and League Two. Except, there are two other leagues—National Independent Soccer Association and MLS Next Pro (which starts play in 2022)—that also have third-division classification. Chattanooga FC, down the road, plays in the NISA league.
In a 2013 interview with Scotland’s Daily Record newspaper after leading Young Harris to a DII’s No. 1 ranking and a conference title, McKeever said, “Being involved in professional football is a dream that I’ll keep chasing.” It appears he may be at the door of accomplishing the dream now.
If you need a refresher, Take the Ball, Pass the Ball on Netflix documents this period in Barcelona’s history, when the club won three league, two cup, and two Champions League titles, among other honors.
In case you didn’t catch it, 1888 is the year of the Celtic’s founding—a good line to use when referring to your own favorite team. Except mine tend to bring much more plight than joy. Roger Bennett (the Men in Blazers guy) tweeted last weekend, after Everton struggled to beat a far inferior team 3-2 in extra time in the FA Cup: “My oldest son has just thanked me for making him an Everton fan. With straight face, told me ‘It provides you with a deeper sense of empathy for any one in the world who is suffering.’” My feeling exactly.
In total, McKeever has 14 former Young Harris players in the pros. Active players in the USL Championship include Paco Craig at Miami FC, Yesin van der Pluijm at Colorado Springs Switchbacks, and Ilija Ilic at New Mexico United. In USL League One, there is Carlos Gomez (Forward Madison) and Marco Micaletto (Tormenta FC).