Kim Kriese enters her first year as the interim head women’s soccer coach at Lakeland College.
Kriese was named the team’s interim coach in July, when the decision was made to split the head coaching jobs for the men’s and women’s soccer programs. Adam Galla will continue to coach the Muskie men, while Kriese was tabbed to coach the women’s team this season.
"I'm extremely happy that Lakeland has taken a big step and decided to split the programs," said Kriese. "Coach Galla has been a great mentor over the past two years and has allowed me to be more hands-on than most assistant coaches. He has also been a great advocate and leader for both programs. Each program now having their own head coach allows us to give our student-athletes more one-on-one attention, to give more attention to details, to recruit more efficiently and, ultimately, to provide a more positive student-athlete experience at Lakeland College."
She is no stranger to the program, though, as she enters her fourth season as a coach with the team. Kriese served as the team’s graduate assistant coach in 2011-12 and continued as an assistant with the program last year. She came to Lakeland after playing soccer for four years at Marian University in Fond du Lac. Competing at one of Lakeland's rival schools in the Northern Athletics (now Northern Athletics Collegiate) Conference, Kriese was a three-time First Team All-NAC player, and as a senior in 2011 she was named NAC Offensive Player of the Year as well as Marian's Female Athlete of the Year. She holds Marian school records for matches started (75), goals (66), points (156), shots (346) and game-winning goals (18).
Kriese also was an excellent student at Marian. She was named an NSCAA Third Team All-Central Region Scholar in 2009 and to the ESPN/CoSIDA Academic All-District First Team in 2010. Kriese is a native of Stevens Point and graduated from Marian in May 2011 with a bachelor's degree in psychology. In 2013, she completed her masters from Lakeland in higher education counseling.
