Nicole Inman

Bryant soccer coach tapped for national honor

Nicole Inman, the head coach for the Bryant girls soccer program, was recently named 2019 State Coach of the Year for Arkansas High School Girls by United Soccer Coaches. In her second season with the program, Inman led the Lady Hornets to its second Class 7A state championship.
Nicole Inman, the head coach for the Bryant girls soccer program, was recently named 2019 State Coach of the Year for Arkansas High School Girls by United Soccer Coaches. In her second season with the program, Inman led the Lady Hornets to its second Class 7A state championship.

Mike Lee, the athletic director for the Bryant School District, describes Nicole Inman as courageous.

“She is a teacher, a mother and a wife, and when you start adding all those things together, it makes for a really courageous and strong lady,” Lee said. “She is a source of inspiration for me and others on campus.”

Inman, who is entering her third year as the head coach for the Bryant Lady Hornets soccer team, has spent the past year receiving treatment for brain cancer after having a seizure in 2018. During that time, she still managed to lead the program to its second Class 6A state championship win in May after a state runner-up finish in 2018. The Lady Hornets won its first state championship in 2013 under former coach Julie Parker.

“I have a really strong faith,” she said. “I have never cried about having a tumor. I never really worried about it. I don’t think about it very much.

“I just really believe and have seen God do too many things with what I am going through to not help other people and to touch other people.”

Inman was recently named Coach of the Year by United Soccer Coaches, a national organization based in Kansas City, Missouri.

“I haven’t done a lot of research on what exactly that means to me. I had some colleagues who coach, and they are the ones who told me they were going to put me up for it and wanted me to get it,” Inman said.

“I am so humbled by the opportunity to represent the school and to represent the sport,” she said. “My girls worked hard to not only show what we worked on in training, but they also had the desire to be the best they could and win a state title. I couldn’t have done it without them.

“I wouldn’t have been selected or looked at, had the girls not worked really hard and had the desire to win.”

Bryant defeated Conway in the Class 6A state finals in May at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. It was the third meeting of the two schools, with Bryant having already lost the first two games during the regular season, and Inman believes the difference was the Lady Hornets’ overall experience in a finals environment.

“Us playing in the state finals [in 2018] was a benefit for us,” she said. “We were used to the pressure, and we had been in the stadium, and we knew what to expect to hear.

“When it came time for it, it wasn’t much of a shock, and for Conway, it was probably more of a shock, honestly.”

She said one of the ways the Lady Hornets prepared for the state championship was to turn the speakers up really loud at the stadium in Bryant.

“I remember that when the boys team came out, they were asking, ‘What is going on? Why do you have that up so loud?’” Inman said. “Because when you aren’t used to it, it is more of a shock, having to play where you can’t hear what other people are saying on the field.

“You have to be louder and more confident and not feel like you are being swallowed by sound.”

Addison Funk, a junior goalie for the Lady Hornets, said she has known Inman since she was about 9 or 10, having played soccer for her at the club level.

“While other coaches may yell at you and think that’s how they make you better, Coach talks you through it and helps you fix your mistakes,” Funk said. “She helps you understand what you are doing wrong instead of telling you what you are doing wrong — she shows you the steps.”

Funk said having Inman on the sidelines and in the classroom while she was going through treatment for cancer was an inspiration.

“When we found out she had cancer, we all desired to work harder because we knew we wanted it even more, because you never know what is going to happen,” Funk said. “We all fought for it harder. We knew we could get there again, and the second year, [her diagnosis] really made us work harder.

“We wanted to do it for ourselves and for her.”

Funk said Inman’s cancer served as a reality check for Funk and her teammates.

“We realized we weren’t really appreciative of the time we had with her, and despite everything, she was still here every day, so we had to be committed to her as well,” Funk said.

Inman was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, the weekend after the state championship. She suffered a seizure that Memorial Day weekend.

She has since gone through 31 radiation treatments, which, Inman said, is the most she is allowed.

“I just finished my last round of chemo treatment in July,” she said. “I go in for an MRI in a week.”

Inman said her cancer is in her brain, so surgery is not an option, “just because it is really close to certain things. I did have one doctor who was willing to do the surgery, but too many things weren’t right about it, and I decided not to do it. I will be going [for a checkup] in a week and see what else I need to be doing.”

Something else that Inman talked about is having her twin daughters, Abbey and Ashton, on the team, and the coach said she has always made a conscious effort to keep her home life and her coaching life separate.

“I always have these pink sunglasses, and when I have those on, I’m a coach, and when I take them off, I’m a mom,” Inman said. “I didn’t want [my daughters] to ever not like me because I am their coach, because I am their mom.

“Most parents struggle with coaching their kids and being a parent, but I treat them differently. I probably coach my kids the least. The other kids get more attention than them, so they have to keep up.”

Inman said she never talks soccer at home with her twins, who are juniors this year. She said once they get into the car, she is no longer Coach; she is Mom — “unless they want to talk about something,” she said, “but I don’t tell them what we are going to do at practice. I don’t tell them anything.”

Inman, who is a member of Geyer Springs First Baptist Church in Little Rock, said she has used her cancer as a way to minister to her players on the field and her students in the classroom.

“Last year, I think it was more of a push for my players. ‘She is out here, she doesn’t miss practice, she is going to treatment and doing all of this, so we are going to work our butts off,’” Inman said of her team. “I hope that wasn’t their only focus because I never wanted it to be.”

She said that after the finals in the spring, she was just very thankful that she made it through.

“I had to thank the Lord that we finished, and I was still walking,” she said. “I was very happy.”

Inman is originally from Minnesota but has lived in Arkansas since marrying her husband, Scott, 20 years ago. The two met at Quincy University in Illinois, where they worked together on the news desk. He was sports, and she did the weather. She graduated from Quincy in 1998 with a degree in mass communications, never dreaming of coaching or teaching, she said.

The couple have four children: Garrett, the oldest, is a freshman at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, and their youngest son, Nathan, 10, wants nothing to do with soccer.

“I have coached soccer since I was 15, for different teams, but once I got married and had [my first] baby, I stopped coaching until it was time for my son to start playing, and they needed parent volunteers,” she said.

Inman said she has used her cancer diagnosis as her personal ministry.

“For me, [having cancer has] been an opportunity for students to know that I am not perfect,” Inman said, “and I am struggling with stuff, but I am still here, and they can talk to me about anything.”

Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.

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