Ian Brophy just concluded third season as the Northwestern State soccer coach, leading the Demons to their third regular season Southland Conference Championship.
Led by SLC Player of the Year Emily Senatore, Brophy guided NSU to 13 victories, tied for the most wins in program history since 2000. For that, he was named conference coach of the year.
Senatore was the seventh Demon to be named conference player of the year and third in the last four seasons.
In addition to winning conference coach of the year and Senatore winning conference player of the year and midfielder of the year, Jessica Spitzer was named conference defender of the year and Hosane Soukou earned conference freshman of the year.
Overall, he has coached seven first team all-conference selections and nine all-conference players overall.
The season started off strong, as Brophy coached the Demons to their first ever victory over a ranked opponent, beating No. 19 Texas 3-2.
In his second season, he guided the Demons to five more wins than he did in his first season, leading NSU to a fourth-place finish in the Southland Conference and a second consecutive berth in the conference tournament semifinals.
During the 2024 season, he coached three Demons to the SLC All-Conference team, including a pair—Senatore and Taylor Spitzer—making the first team.
Spitzer scored six goals and dished out four assists for 16 points, the second-highest total in the league.
In his first season in Natchitoches, Brophy led the program to the SLC Tournament semifinals and nearly knocked off top-seeded Lamar. He did that despite losing 16 players from the 2022 team and inheriting no recruits committed to NSU when he took over.
NSU was playing its best down the stretch, not losing in regulation in any of its final five contests, going 2-0-3 during that span, earning a No. 4 seed in the SLC Tournament.
In his first year, he coached an all-conference selection in Spitzer, who scored four goals and recorded nine points.
Brophy came to NSU from Mount Olive (NC) where he led the Trojans to a 13-5 record and the Conference Carolinas regular season crown in his only season as the person in charge, going 11-1 during league play.
He led the Trojans to the championship despite the team losing its top two goal scorers from the previous season as well as the Conference Carolinas Defensive Player of the Year.
Brophy coached eight all-conference selections in his one season at Mount Olive, the most of any team in the conference.
Prior to his time at Mount Olive, he was an assistant for Division II Florida Southern for five seasons, where he led the Mocs to 18 wins after the school won just nine games combined in the previous three seasons.
In his first season, he helped guide the Mocs to an 8-3-4 mark in 2017, despite operating with the lowest scholarship total in the conference. That 2017 campaign was their best mark since 2010.
Brophy spent one season as an assistant at Knox College in 2016, Brophy helped lead the Prairie Fire to an unblemished 19-0-1 overall record after the team recorded just one winning season in the previous eight years.
The only season at Knox was the first NCAA appearance in program history, along with the first conference regular season and tournament titles. The team also earned its first top-25 ranking in school history.
He began his career as an assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s soccer teams at Treasure Valley CC.
Inheriting a team who posted a 2-14-4 mark the year before, he helped guide the women’s team to an incredible turnaround, going 28-9-5 in his two seasons there. Among those two seasons was a 16-3-3 mark in his first season, a 14-win turnaround.
In that historic first season, it was the school’s first ever appearance in the Northwest Athletic Conference quarterfinals and best season in school history.
During his tenure, the women also found the national rankings in the NSCAA top 25 for the first time in school history.
In his second season with the women, the team went 12-6-2, while setting a school record eight-game unbeaten run and returned to the NWAC playoffs.
The men’s program went 8-7-5 in his first season, narrowly missing the NWAC playoffs by a single point after finishing last the season before.
Brophy graduated in 2012 from Emerson College in Boston.
He lives in Natchitoches with his wife Autumn and the couple welcomed its first child in March 2024.
