HIGH POINT — Zach Haines had plenty of success as a player growing up in the area. Twenty years later, he’s doing the same as a coach.
Haines — who starred at Southwest Guilford — enters his sixth season as the men’s soccer coach at High Point University, where he’s continued to grow the program into a perennial contender atop the Big South Conference.
“I’m very proud. I’ve enjoyed my time here,” Haines said. “To be involved with the sport we love and have a job we’re passionate about, that’s a blessing in itself. And then to be able to do that in your hometown just adds to it. I’ve been very, very fortunate to not only have the people around me — an unbelievable staff, great kids — we’ve had a lot of success on the field, and that’s been great.
“But I’m just as proud of the reputation that we’ve built with this program and how our guys treat people, how they are on and off the field, in terms of their success and the way they represent the university and the community. Same thing for my staff. All those things when you boil it down have made for a really great five years. And I’m looking forward to hopefully many more.”
Haines was hired as High Point’s head coach in 2019. Since then, the program has had a chance to win the conference every year — capturing two regular-season titles and three conference tournament championships (including the last two) in five finals appearances.
The Panthers have made three NCAA Tournament appearances — reaching the second round twice, receiving a first-round bye in 2020 and toppling North Carolina in the first round in 2022. It has been a successful run so far for Haines, who also had strong stints as an assistant at Denver and UNC Wilmington.
“I just feel a lot of gratitude, because it’s not just me,” he said. “It’s the people I work with every day, people who are around this athletic department — the support staff and the student-athletes we’ve had. There are a lot of great head coaches who don’t win trophies or maybe don’t achieve a high level of success. And it doesn’t come down to just one person.
“That’s where I can look back at what we’ve done and then look forward and feel so good where we’re heading because of all the people that are involved in in this organization. I have a leadership role, which, yeah, is an important role. But we are all very much in this together. And if we are going to continue to make things better, then it really is a wholesale effort.”
Haines, whose dad played football and baseball at West Virginia, grew up in Jamestown — “Everything, Jamestown Youth League. I played everything at JYL,” he said with a smile. Soccer was starting to catch on at the time, and the area quickly became a hotbed for soccer talent.
Programs at local high schools were competing for state championships in droves. Southwest won a 2A title in 1994 and reached the finals in 1993 and 1999, the year before Haines made the varsity team as a freshman. And nearby rival Ragsdale won three 3A titles in four appearances in the mid-’90s.
“It was such a big deal,” Haines said. “Back then all the best players played high school in the fall and club in the spring. I just came through from JYL to Jamestown Jammers, high school soccer — in this area, the momentum in this area was really great. And having an opportunity to go play at UNC. It was a great place to be for soccer at that time.”
Haines, who graduated in 2004 and earned a scholarship to play at North Carolina, scored 149 goals in his career — still the high mark at Southwest and ninth in NCHSAA history. The Cowboys won 83 games and reached the regional semifinals twice and the regional final once during his four-year career.
He played his freshman season with the Tar Heels before suffering an ankle injury just before the ACC Tournament. He tried to return to the team over the next year, but he just couldn’t recover and hung up his cleats. But as he tried to figure what he’d do next, he discovered an interest in coaching.
“I didn’t know coaching was going to be part of the equation,” Haines said. “In fact, I took a really long break from soccer because I was heartbroken. I was completely devastated my playing career was cut so short. So, I didn’t have anything to do with the game for a while. I’d still go cheer on my boys, but really my junior year was just figuring out life.
“It was the first time in a long time I wasn’t a high-level competitive athlete. And then my senior year I started to fall back in love with it and realized it was too big of a part of me and I needed to find a way a way to be involved. I didn’t know how or what that looked like. But by the time I was done at UNC I thought that coaching might be the answer.”
Haines got a regular job working for Soccer.com and began as an assistant coach at East Chapel Hill High. A couple months in, he recognized coaching was what he truly wanted to do. So, he asked the coaches at North Carolina if he could volunteer as a coach during the spring.
He quit his job and began a four-year run of coaching every youth, high school, college-age team he could — every level, every age group, boys and girls. “Everything I could do to make a name for myself and prove myself, get experience and learn,” he said.
Haines, who coached his Triangle Football Club team to the 2011 USL Super-20 National Championship semifinal, joined the staff at UNC Wilmington under longtime coach Aidan Heaney in 2012 and was promoted to associate head coach in 2016. In 2018, he joined the staff as an assistant at Denver.
It wasn’t always the easiest, he admitted. But the hard work started to pay off as his teams began to rack up accolades, conference titles and NCAA Tournament appearances (in total, his teams have had six in 12 years).
“You have to be fully committed,” Haines said. “You better love it, be passionate about it and be driven. You’re not living the same lifestyle as some of your other buddies you just went to college with. Your schedule is unorthodox — you’re missing a lot of weddings, funerals, friends getting together and stuff like that. You hate that side of it, but that’s why you have to be so committed to it.”
In 2019, the head coaching job at High Point opened, and Haines finally got the opportunity he’d been working toward.
“I was so fortunate in my time at UNCW and my time at Denver that I could afford to be patient,” said Haines, whose wife is from Greensboro. “Really good programs doing really good things with really good people. So, I was in a position where I could wait to jump at an opportunity that I felt would be a great fit.”
The Panthers will play their first exhibition match of the season today at Furman before hosting Wofford on Wednesday. They will open their regular season Saturday, Aug. 17, at home against William Peace looking to build off the success they’ve established in recent seasons.
“This is about a student-athlete experience, hopefully something that helps you for the long haul,” said Haines, who is 38 years old. “When you create an environment where that is the cornerstone and you don’t shy away from that, sustainable success will follow.
“If you’re just ultimately results driven and very transactional, you might hit every once every few years. But to be able to do it consistently, you have to put more into it than just be a soccer coach. You have to be a leader, and you have to create something that people want to be a part of — staff and players.”
