As well as serving as the head coach of the ABAC Fillies soccer team, Chris Earls is a Biology Lab Instructor in the college's Department of Science and Mathematics.
But often, his academic and coaching backgrounds overlap. When ABAC was officially accepted as the newest member of the Southern States Athletic Conference, Earls reverted to his days as a serious student with a master's degree in Biology and began researching and collecting data on the league's women's soccer program.
As an educator, Earls quickly gave the conference extremely high marks.
"I don't think there's much question is the toughest conference for women's soccer in the NAIA," he said. "Last year, four of the top 10 teams in the nation were from our league. William Carey was undefeated all year and lost in the national championship game on penalty kicks. Tennessee Southern only lost one conference match and made the national tournament, Life made its first ever trip to the national tournament and Thomas University was ranked 10^th in the country and is a great program.
"It's not going to be easy," he added. "But I think our players will feed off of that and being in such a great conference should help us recruit even more talent. Great players want to play against great players."
Earls returns a dozen players from a year ago but with only one senior (Caroline Sheffield from Dodge County) and a handful of juniors, it's a young squad compared to the rest of the conference.
"That will be a challenge but you can't get hung up on that," he said. "We look at this as building a program and our players are going to be a part of something special. They will be the first four-year team in ABAC soccer history. Nothing will change that. It's exciting."