Taking the Next Step

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jennie Clark’s first season as Vanderbilt soccer assistant coach will involve some adjustments. Let’s start with Nashville, where preseason will be hotter than what she experienced at Northwestern. So, too, the chicken. SEC soccer will be another new world all its own. A year ago, nine SEC teams reached the NCAA Tournament and three advanced to the Sweet 16—including the Commodores she now coaches.

Not that change is likely to knock her off her stride. Change is part of taking the next step. You want a tricky move? Try being a small-town kid from Norwalk, Iowa, with big dreams and very little German who moves to Leipzig to play professional soccer. Or being a defender plugged into a recently promoted team’s back line as it struggles for survival in the Frauen-Bundesliga, one of the world’s most competitive leagues long before giant clubs in places like England, Spain and Italy started to spend money on the women’s game.

Clark learned the language and survived the Autobahn. Her team went down, but she impressed enough to move up—to a title contender and Champion’s League regular by the end of her stay in Germany. She can handle Nashville. She’ll be fine in the SEC.

"I like to give the ‘why’ behind things and also hold people to high standards—because I know they’re capable of reaching those standards. Most of the time, people want to put in the work to achieve what they believe they are capable of achieving."

Vanderbilt assistant coach Jennie Clark

A rising talent who is still early in her coaching career, she nevertheless brings a world of experience to head coach Darren Ambrose’s staff. She understands that as difficult as it is to turn dreams into reality, figuring out what comes next is often even more of a puzzle. She found the answer in coaching. Pursuing her ambitions as far as they would take her wasn’t the end of the road. It was preparation for helping a new generation take their next steps.

“I’m a relationship coach,” Clark said. “I care about the development of young women being their best selves and empowering them to know that they’re able to do more than what they think they can do. That’s my ‘why’—that’s why I like to do this.”

Going the Extra Mile

Growing up in Iowa, Clark knew she wanted to be a professional athlete. How to go about that was less clear. It wasn’t even obvious that soccer was her best path—she was a high school long jump state champion and repeat medalist in the 200 and 400 meters.

“I loved continuously getting better at something and the opportunities that unlocked as I kept going forward,” Clark said of eventually settling on soccer. “I love being in competitive spaces and soccer gave that to me. There was a ceiling for where I could go with track, but I also loved the team aspect of soccer. I loved being a part of a group of people working together to reach a goal.”

Further complicating her professional aspirations was that she played most of her high school and collegiate soccer in the years between the WUSA and WPS, short-lived domestic pro leagues that preceded the NWSL. The Vanderbilt freshmen she now coaches were in kindergarten when the NWSL kicked off. For them, it has always been there. For her, after anchoring a back line on a pair of Sweet 16 teams at Minnesota, she had to navigate a soccer wilderness.

She caught on with Sky Blue FC in the final season before WPS closed its doors, then looked to options abroad. She ended up at Lokomotiv Leipzig, entering its first ever season in the Frauen-Bundesliga. It was a rough debut. The team won just four games and conceded an astonishing 79 goals in 22 games. Relegated and eventually dissolved, the club faded into obscurity. Clark proved far more difficult to dismiss. She impressed enough in difficult circumstances that she remained in the top league, first with Freiburg and eventually Frankfurt, coming off a Champions League title when she joined it in 2015.

She played alongside some of the biggest names in the game at Frankfurt, not only mainstays of the German national team but stars from Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and more. That didn’t bring the same acclaim back home as playing alongside homegrown stars like Tobin Heath and Heather O’Reilly, as she had in her year with Sky Blue. But she wasn’t after validation, just growth. She wanted the discomfort—and reward—that comes in pushing past what you thought possible. She found out what she was capable of, from learning German on the fly in a part of the country where English was still far from universal to surviving a relegation battle and thriving in the most competitive environments.

“You learn a lot about yourself,” Clark said of living and working abroad. “You learn how to have empathy, honestly, because everything is so different. I learned how to be flexible and understanding of other people. I learned how to figure out a way to communicate with people when you’re not exactly on the same page. And I learned how to grind through things when they aren’t going well—it was a rough time [at Leipzig]. But it was interesting because it reinforced how much I wanted to stay over there. I really enjoyed the people that I was with and the culture I was in. I just found it a really peaceful place for me to be.”

Sharing Her Experience

In 2016, Clark walked away from professional soccer with years left on her contract, eschewing either another season in Germany or trying her luck in the NWSL. Although it felt necessary at the time, she looks back now with regret at the games left unplayed. She isn’t shy about that. Still, as is often the case with regret, the choices responsible for it are also waypoints on a path that leads somewhere worth going.

Returning to the United States, she worked in sales and worked in the administration of a local soccer league in the Minneapolis area. While she had run offseason soccer camps in Iowa even when she was playing in Germany, she had little interest in coaching as a profession. At least until 2019, when former Minnesota teammate Molly Rouse called. Utah Tech head coach at the time, now in the same role at Ole Miss, Rouse convinced Clark to move to St. George, Utah, and join her staff. It took a friend, someone who knew what she was capable of, to cajole her into taking the step. But it was the game that kept her there.

“I realized coming back to soccer and coaching is how I impact the most people to the best of my ability in the space where I feel like I also have a lot of knowledge,” Clark said. “I’ve had a lot experiences, and I’m very invested in continuing to grow. I do as much as possible with coaching education, scouting education. All of that knowledge is going to make me be my best self as a coach, which is somebody who empowers.”

It hasn’t taken her long to make an impression. In addition to helping Utah Tech transition from NCAA Division II to Division I and two seasons at Northwestern, she was an assistant coach with a highly successful Minnesota Aurora FC side in the USL W-League and has contributed to U.S. Soccer youth national teams.

“We were very intentional in searching for who we wanted in this role and Jennie was a great fit,” Ambrose said. “She has an experienced background, playing both collegiately and professionally. She has filled various coaching roles at both levels and is committed to not only developing individual players but also exceptional young women.”

For her, Vanderbilt checked every box. She would be part of a program with a history of recent success and the resources and support to aim even higher. Speaking with soccer administrator Alison Wenzel, who is also director of Vanderbilt’s Ingram Center for Student-Athlete Success, she appreciated the program holding itself to the same standards in the classroom as on the field. And for someone who envisions someday taking charge of her own program, she valued Ambrose’s commitment to growth for not just student-athletes but the staff who work alongside him. Nashville didn’t hurt, either.

She loves to hear student-athletes talk about ambition to play beyond college, whether in the NWSL or abroad—and there are plenty of them at Vanderbilt. She’s all in on helping them get there. But she’s no less aware of how those lessons, not to mention a Vanderbilt degree, will help them adapt and thrive well beyond the soccer field.

“I think I coach the way that I needed to be coached,” Clark said. “I like to give the ‘why’ behind things and also hold people to high standards—because I know they’re capable of reaching those standards. Most of the time, people want to put in the work to achieve what they believe they are capable of achieving.

“Honestly, that’s also part of my ‘why,’ because I want them to know what they are capable of doing.”

She’s been there. And she wants to show them the way.

She can even tell them in German, if it helps.