Women's Soccer
- Title:
- Head Coach
- Email:
- thrasher@rice.edu
- Phone:
- 348-6956
At Rice -- By working from her own blueprint, Rice head Nicky Adams continues to build a sky-scrapper of soccer program that has the Owls winning conference championships, earning a national ranking, taking an international trip to play professional women's soccer teams in exotic locales, and doing so with elite academic success.
There is certainly a winning tradition and positive vibe about Adam's program. College soccer circles know that with Adams at the helm Rice Soccer `has a ring to it.'
Adams continues to lead the Owls with a passion for the world's most popular game and a commitment to the school's student-athletes. She is unique example where a person's vocation and avocation are one-and-the-same. In seven full seasons as the head coach, and 15 years at Rice University overall, the Texas native has built a solid 80-46-22 record. Quickly amassing a career ledger that is already 34 games over .500 is a result of combining technical expertise with the care of dedicated preparation for each and every match. Rice has now managed to reach the double-digit win plateau for four-straight years (and six times in seven seasons).
The 2017 season may have been some of her best coaching yet, and it is easy to see the year is among the very best in the history of the program. Rice won the 2017 Conference USA regular season championship with an unbeaten 9-0-1 league record and earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Owls won a school-record ten-straight matches during one stretch and vaulted to a national ranking of No. 18 in the country. A player that Adams identified and personally recruited more than four years before, Samantha Chaiken, was named the Conference USA Midfielder of the Year before being selected as the program's first All-America honoree. The Adams-trained soccer player was eventually named the recipient of the Joyce Pounds-Hardy Award as Rice University's Female Student-Athlete of the Year. The head coach has developed at least one Rice player to all-region accolades in every year she has been at the helm. It was Adams' fellow coaches in the conference who voted her as the 2017 C-USA Coach of the year in a landslide.
After such a dynamic 2017 season Adams knew the next logical thing to do was show the program off to the rest of the world. In the spring of 2018 she oversaw the Rice Soccer's first international trip -- week-long a cultural, educational and competitive tour Spain. In addition to seeing historic sites in Barcelona and Valencia, the Owls played two exhibition matches against older, professional women's teams in a soccer-crazed European country. With no scouting report, much less a chance to watch the opposing team's video, Adams simply coached the game in front of her and the Owls went on to post an eye-opening 1-0 victory over Spanish First Division team RCD Espanyol Femeni. When the 2017-2018 academic school year ended, the Owls were recognized by Conference USA and United Soccer Coaches (formerly the NSCAA) for having 3.757 team grade point average that was among the very best in the entire country.
Year-by-year Adams has been building at a steady pace. Her 2016 squad reached double-digit wins on the way to a then school record-tying seven-straight wins late in the year. The Owls enjoyed one of the longest unbeaten streaks in the country to earn the No. 2 seed in the Conference USA Tournament. Three players earned All-Central Region honors.
No less than six Owls earned C-USA postseason playing honors in 2015, including standout Lauren Hughes as the league's Co-Offensive Player of the Year. Under Adams' soccer training regimen, Hughes rewrote almost each of the school's offensive records before signing a professional contract to play soccer internationally. Hughes had the kind of year that was all too reminiscent of the seasons Adams had while earning All-America honors playing at Texas A&M in the late 1990s. In the Fall of 2015 Adams' sensational collegiate playing career was celebrated with her induction into her alma mater's Athletics Hall of Fame.
Her 2014 squad won the C-USA Tournament title, advanced to the NCAA Championships, and tied the school record with 14 wins. She was the C-USA Coach of the Year for the first time but there was still a little more to it beyond playing a championship level of soccer. It was an Adams-recruited and coached player, Gabriela Iribarne, who was recognized by the C-USA Commissioner for having the best community service initiative that semester.
In fact win, lose or draw, Adams' influence on Rice soccer's on community service is clear to see. In her tenure three Owls (Iribarne, Kara Dugall and Elizabeth Nesbit) have all won the C-USA Spirit of Service Award for their respective volunteer/outreach work.
The 2013 squad's combination of having some key seniors graduate along with an eye-opening number of season-ending injuries was a challenge to be sure, but it also might have showcased Adams' leadership. Even when injuries limited the Owls' available playing personnel to a point where the head coach had to improvise and begin training a student-athlete off the Rice track team, her resolve was stronger than ever. By getting everyone to pull together she coached the team to an unbeaten mark in its last three regular season games to qualify for the conference tournament. Her Owls also nearly pulled off the upset of the league's eventual regular season champion and NCAA participant (Colorado College), only to be edged in overtime. At the end of the year she had coached three players to first team all-conference honors, two of which went on to earn all-region accolades.
In her second year at the helm of the program in 2012, a young Owls squad won the Conference USA regular season title. It marked the first regular season conference championship in the history of the soccer program and the accompanying 11 victories was Rice's highest single-season win total in five years.
In Adams' first full season at the helm of the program in 2011, Rice soccer posted a tie against nationally-ranked BYU (on the road) on the way to the program's first double-digit win total in three years. The Owls won a game in the C-USA Tournament for the first time since 2007, and in fact went undefeated in the tourney before a tie in the semifinal round was decided by penalty kicks. Adams coached four Rice players to all-conference honors and one to all-region status. Two Owls were named to the C-USA all-academic team and as a group the entire team's cumulative grade point average was ranked among the 25 best in the nation.
Adams is only the second head coach in the history of the Rice soccer program. The El Paso native and former All-America player at Texas A&M had worked on the Rice coaching staff for eight seasons when she was named the program's Interim Head Coach for the final 13 games of 2010. Adams was officially promoted to Rice Head Coach on November 15, 2010 (which was extra-special for Adams as the announcement was made on her birthday).
When the University appointed her the interim head coach seven games into the 2010 season she proceeded to lead the Owls to their best conference start in school history at 5-0-1. Rice went on to qualify for the C-USA Tournament for the first time since 2008 with its highest seed in that event since 2007. With Adams at the helm for all 11 C-USA league games, four Owls earned all-conference honors and three were named to the conference All-Academic team.
Her long influence on the program shows the promotion was earned. Since she joined the staff in January 2003 Rice soccer has been at its best. Adams' lead as the recruiting coordinator, identifying the nation's top young student-athletes on the field and in the classroom, has helped Rice earn national recognition for its signing classes. The most recent signing class from the spring of 2010 was among the top tier of the central region, a near-perfect complement to the 2008 and 2007 classes that were rated among the best in C-USA. With Adam's personal attention, there's every reason to expect the Rice recruiting to continue to get better and better.
In her first season as associate head coach in 2006, Adams' expanded role resulted in the Owls posting their first-ever win over a Top 10 opponent. The program soon earned its first-ever national ranking in 2006.
With Adams on board Rice won the 2005 Conference USA championship and made back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament. The team has played in the championship game of its conference tournament three times in her seven years.
Right from the start the Owls won as many games in Adams' first year (11 in 2003) as the program did in its first two years combined. The Rice win total climbed to a school record 14 victories in 2004, but that's not all. Rice advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history and set a host of team and individual records.
As a member of the Texas A&M teams that won the Big 12 championship in 1997 and Big 12 Tournament titles in `97 and 2001, the former Nicky Thrasher finished her career near the top of virtually every Aggie offensive category.
One of A&M's most decorated players of all time, the El Paso native ranks third in career points (140), second in goals (57) and fifth in assists (26) for the Aggies, and her 391 shots rank as the most in Texas A&M history. She was nominated for the Herman Trophy as the Division I women's soccer player of the year in both 1999 and 2001.
In her first three years with the Aggies, Thrasher emerged as the team's main offensive threat and one of the best forwards in the country. She earned first-team NSCAA all-Central Region honors in 1998 and `99, along with being named to the first team all-Big 12 in `99. Also, Thrasher was the Big 12 Tournament's most valuable player in `98 and was named the Aggies' offensive MVP on three occasions.
In 2001, Thrasher returned from a medical redshirt for a magical senior season. Coming off a broken leg suffered three games into the 2000 campaign, Thrasher led A&M through the Big 12 Tournament and into the NCAA Tournament before falling to Portland in the Elite Eight. She again earned all-region, all-conference and team MVP honors for her efforts in 2001, but this time she also included NSCAA third-team all-America honors to her distinguished list of accolades.
Thrasher graduated from Texas A&M in 2001 with a B.S. in kinesiology. Prior to joining the Owls, Thrasher was the second selection of the Atlanta Beat of the Women's United Soccer Association in the league's 2002 draft, even appearing with the Beat as it took on the Washington Freedom Oct. 19, 2002, at Rice Track/Soccer Stadium in the Space City Shootout.
She married Charlie Adams of New Braunfels, Texas, in June of 2005. The couple welcomed soccer prodigy Cade Adams to the family in March of 2017.
