Orlando Pride coach Seb Hines has been named the 2024 NWSL Coach of the Year, the league announced Tuesday. Hines is in the middle of preparation for the Pride’s first-ever championship after running a nearly flawless campaign through the regular season to help lead the team to the Shield, also their first.

Hines coached the pride to an 18-2-6 season, which included a 23-game unbeaten streak that only ended in October. The team rebounded from its two losses in October and has taken that momentum into the playoffs, defeating the No. 8-seed Chicago Red Stars 4-1 and the No. 4-seed Kansas City Current 3-2, both at home. The team will face the No. 2-seed Washington Spirit in Kansas City on Nov. 23.

Hines has been a success story for the Pride and a case study in managing staff continuity, having been named interim head coach in June 2022 after the club placed former head coach Amanda Cromwell on administrative leave. Hines, the first Black head coach in the NWSL, oversaw an extremely difficult ending to the 2022 season; his second-ever game as interim was a 6-0 loss to the Portland Thorns. However, Hines managed to get the team to turn around mid-season results with a seven-game unbeaten streak, only to run out of steam at the end, leaving them 10th in the league overall.

Hines retained the head coach title and brought the Pride within a hair’s breadth of qualifying for playoffs in 2023, leading into the high-octane success of 2024.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Orlando Pride, Soccer, NWSL

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