Laura Harvey Returns as Head Coach of OL Reign
OL Reign today announced that it has appointed Laura Harvey as its head coach. Harvey replaces former head coach Farid Benstiti, who resigned his position on July 2. Harvey previously led OL Reign for five seasons, from 2013 to 2017, earning NWSL Coach of the Year honors in 2014 and 2015. Harvey will join OL Reign following the conclusion of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she is serving as an assistant coach for the U.S Women’s National Team.
Interim Head Coach Sam Laity will continue to lead the team for its next four matches and will remain with the club as its assistant coach after Harvey’s arrival in early August.
From 2013 to 2017, Harvey finished with a regular season record of 51 wins, 33 losses and 26 draws with a .464 winning percentage over 110 regular-season games with the Reign. She led the club to consecutive NWSL Shields and NWSL Championship match appearances in 2014 and 2015, becoming the first NWSL head coach to reach 100 matches coached, as well as the first to notch 50 wins. After stepping away from the Reign in November 2017, Harvey served as the head coach of the Utah Royals for its 2018 and 2019 seasons before joining U.S. Soccer as the Under-20 Women’s National Team head coach in January 2020, where she led the U-20s through a seven-game unbeaten run at the 2020 Concacaf Women's U-20 Championship in the Dominican Republic to capture the title.
"I am incredibly excited to welcome Laura back to the Reign. When she departed in 2017, I said she would always remain a part of our family—today's announcement is the realization of my objective to someday bring her back home to our club,” said OL Reign CEO Bill Predmore. “While Laura may be best remembered for her incredible success during our 2014 and 2015 seasons, it was her work after the 2013 season that for me makes her the perfect individual to lead the club today.”
Predmore continued, “Despite an extremely difficult first season for all involved, Laura helped forge a new identity for the club that forever transformed our DNA. She shared a vision for how the game should be played and for how our club could be successful in the NWSL. She exhibited the ambition to build a team that would compete for championships, the grit to radically reshape the squad with world-class talent, and the gift to clearly articulate her plan in a manner that inspired the team to strive for greatness.”
“It is this experience that I believe makes her uniquely qualified to lead us through our current challenge: to transform a group of exceptional players into an extraordinary team.”
After more than 18 months away from the NWSL, Harvey believes that returning to the league and to the Reign team she is familiar with is the right decision for her.
“The role I’ve had at U.S. Soccer has really shaped me into being a better coach and a better human being and allowed me to see exactly where I want to move forward as a coach. Coming back to the Reign, I feel like there is some unfinished business left to do here. I know the club pretty well and some of the players pretty well in regard to what we can do. I’m excited for the challenge and the opportunity,” said Harvey.
Harvey continued, “I’m excited for all it. It is a really special club. I think that the culture that has been set there and continues to thrive is one where everyone wants the same thing – to go out there and put a product on the field that everyone can be proud of. I’m excited to get back out there coaching the team and players and being able to put a product on the field that the fans are really proud of.”
Joining a team midseason can be a difficult task, but Harvey is up to the challenge. She feels her familiarity with the club and many of the staff and players, including Interim Head Coach and long-time Assistant Coach Sam Laity, will provide a great platform for transition.
“It’s not about making huge change. I don’t think there needs to be huge change,” Harvey asserted. “I think it is all about building on the foundations that are already there and getting the players in a position where they can show their true potential as individuals and as a team. I believe that if we do that, we have a great chance at getting the results that we want and moving in a direction that we want, which is forward and up. I think that the transition piece is slightly easier because of my knowledge of the club. It’s new, fresh, and exciting, but it’s also got a very familiar feel to it which is nice and comfortable.”
If there is one thing to be sure of, it’s that Harvey and Laity are on the same page when it comes to the potential of the team and the slow start to the 2021 season. “There’s no panic at all. I think you look at the league table and realize that things can change very quickly with the points difference everyone has. There’s definitely no panic at our position right now. I think the performances that we have seen over the last couple of weeks, as well as speaking to Sam and knowing some of the things that Sam wants to do and has been trying to do, puts us in a great position.”
Though Harvey did not give specifics on how the team plans to play tactically moving forward, her familiarity with the NWSL and how to find success in the league points to the possession-oriented style of the play that club has been known for in previous seasons.
“The two aspects that are really important in this league are what you want to do with the ball, so if we have it can we keep and can we hurt the opposition with it? One of the things I think you truly need in this league is the ability to dictate the game to the opponent, without the ball. In fairness, when I was at the Reign previously, that was something that we did a very good job of. Because we can be so dominant with the ball with the players we have on this team, if we can be really hard to beat without it and really hurt people in the transition moment, we add an extra layer to the playing style that exists within the club.”
Harvey has big goals for the team, both short term and long term. “I think short term, it’s to continue the path that Sam has started, which is making us very hard to beat, putting us in a position to win games, and to take every game as it comes. Get out there and put a performance on the field that we are really proud of and pick up the points necessary to get us where we want to be.”
Looking beyond the current season, Harvey hopes to realize the incredible value derived from the connection to Olympique Lyonnais.
“Another intriguing part of coming back to the Reign for me, was the OL side and the bigger brand and access to what has been such a successful female club over the years. Everything that the OL brand brings with it is super intriguing to me. So long term, just really feeding into that partnership and taking things from that that I think that we can really utilize on this side of the pond to be a successful club both in Europe and over here in the NWSL.”
Harvey concluded, “My message to the club and fans is that I’m excited I’m really honored to be coming back. I’m a different coach than I was when I left, for the better. I have spent a lot of time investing in myself to be better and everyone is going to see the best version of me. Secondly, let’s f*****g go. Let’s just go and smash everybody. I can’t wait to get out there and show people what we can be as a club and try and push us to the full potential that I believe we have now and push us to what our potential can be as a club long term.”