Mark Montieth: Soccer trailblazer Angela Berry White now head of IU Indy women’s team

She heard the voices. How could she not?

“Oh, look, they’ve got a girl on the team!”

“Get that girl! Don’t let her do that to you!”

“She’s a he!”

“Fraulein, Fraulein!”

She also heard the gasps, the quick high-pitched intakes of air someone makes when they encounter the unexpected.

Angela Berry White has just about heard it all in her soccer career, a full circle that began with playing as the only girl on local youth league teams and now has her coaching the Indiana University Indianapolis women’s team. Words, gasps, whatever … none of it bothered her, because defying assumptions and surpassing expectations are part of her nature.

Besides, her teammates had her back.

And she could compete.

“Since Angela was as good as the guys, it was never a big deal to us,” said Taylor Kumler, one of White’s teammates on the Saints, a club team coached by his father, Langdon Kumler. “We practiced with her all the time, and she was definitely one of the better players.

“It was usually when we played opponents [that people talked]. It was like, ‘What? There’s a girl over there!’ Then they would get their ass kicked.”

White has been a trailblazer for girls’ soccer in Indiana, emerging from a landscape that gave her no choice but to play with and against boys. She fittingly became the first female inducted into the Indiana Soccer Hall of Fame in 2007 and is now a passionate standard bearer as a veteran coach who, at 57, has taken on a fresh challenge at IU Indy.

The flames of White’s dedication to women’s soccer were stoked by gender inequity, but it served her well. Although young girls with less talent didn’t share her opportunities, she was treated well by coaches and teammates, developing a sibling-like bond that continues today. The doubts and challenges posed by opponents merely inspired her.

‘Tried to be tougher’

She had other advantages, too. She was the youngest child in her family, with a brother eight years older and a sister nearly five years older. That ingrained a constant feeling of having something to prove and the realization that she would have to speak up to be heard. She had genetic gifts as well, a natural athlete with the boundless enthusiasm of a “spitfire”—her own word. And accurate.

All of that translated nicely to the soccer field and all other playing surfaces. Perhaps the best-remembered incident of her youth, one that provided a concise summary of her experience, occurred when an opposing player pulled her to the ground by yanking on her braid. She jumped up ready to fight back and was quickly surrounded by “brother teammates” who rushed to her aid.

“I just remember her head being snapped back and thinking, ‘Who would do that?’” said Wes Priest, another Saints teammate who went on to play at Indiana University. “I just remember being so angry.”

She appreciated the support. But she didn’t really need it.

“They always knew I could hold my own,” she said. “They didn’t have to stick up for me. I just tried to play tough. Tried to be tougher.”

White played on otherwise all-boys soccer teams through her sophomore year at North Central High School, sharing car rides and plane flights to tournaments throughout the country and into Europe. It was in Holland that someone shouted, “She’s a he!” and in Germany where she heard the cry of “Fraulein!”

Indiana high schools were permitted to field girls’ soccer teams for interscholastic competition during her junior year, although they were unsanctioned—with no state tournament—and governed by the Indiana High School Soccer Association rather than the IHSAA. She welcomed the new era but remains grateful for having had the opportunity to develop among boys.

“It made me get better quicker,” she said. “And all the guys I played with, we’re like family now.”

Exchanging cross country for soccer as a fall sport, she was an all-state selection as a junior and senior and the state’s Offensive Player of the Year both years. She also was a starter and defensive specialist on North Central teams that won two sectional basketball championships and a member of 400- and 1600-meter relay teams that set school records.

It was no surprise, then, that she was voted The Indianapolis Star’s Marion County Athlete of the Year in 1986, along with another three-sport star (and future NFL quarterback) Jeff George of Warren Central.

One of the fondest memories the Saints club team members have of their years together is of the group’s diversity. In later years more than half of the players were diverse, and everyone got along. “It was one of the most healthy things my parents had me involved in,” Priest recalled.

White contributed to that, as well. She identifies as Black—same as her father, a Crispus Attucks High School graduate. Her mother was technically Caucasian but also had Indian heritage. That enabled her parents to marry in 1961, four years before Indiana’s law against interracial marriages was overturned.

Her race, however, has been no more of an issue than her sex. It rarely comes up, because unless you know her background you would assume she is Caucasian, tanned by all the hours spent on outdoor soccer fields.

“I remember growing up, if my dad was with me, people would look sideways sometimes,” she said. “But we took it as the norm. Our cousins … everybody was mixed, it seemed. We didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t an issue.”

One of the bonuses of the family’s blend is her relationship to an uncle—former Boston Celtics guard Sam Jones, a Naismith Hall of Fame inductee who played on 10 NBA championship teams. Jones, who was married to her mother’s sister, was friends with the basketball coach at George Mason University and was instrumental in helping her land a full scholarship.

The original plan was for her to play soccer and basketball. But she became an immediate starter for the soccer team in the fall and by the time the season ended with a Final Four appearance in the NCAA tournament she was too fatigued to jump directly into the basketball season. She wound up sticking solely with soccer and became a four-year starter for George Mason’s nationally prominent program, earning All-America recognition

She continued playing for regional and national teams for nearly a decade after college, including two years as a member of the U.S. Women’s National Team.

She didn’t consider coaching while at George Mason, where she was a government and politics major, but fell into it by circumstance. Langdon Kumler, her youth league coach with the Saints, invited her to work as his assistant when he began Butler University’s women’s soccer program. She went on to join the coaching staff for the women’s team at Indiana University for three seasons, one of which brought a Big Ten championship (1996).

She later was one of three finalists for the head coaching position at IU. Assuming that door to be closed forever, she shifted her focus to raising her son, E.J., with her husband, Eddie. But even coaching the boys’ youth team on which E.J. played didn’t silence the doubters. There was the time, for example, a man in the stands shouted, “This lady doesn’t know what she’s doing; she’s just a mom!”

She didn’t hear that one. But her father and Eddie did.

The coaching door unexpectedly reopened when she was hired to take over the girls’ program at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in 2014. Her teams compiled a 168-49-23 record over 11 seasons, winning eight Marion County tournament championships and a state title in 2015 when her team was ranked first in the country.

‘We are getting better’

She thought she was done with coaching once again when she decided to step down at Brebeuf after last season, but the job at IU Indy opened when Chris Johnson—a former teammate with the Saints—moved into an administrative role at IU Indy. Hired last December, her first team has 13 new players, including 11 freshmen, and just seven seniors. It is not fully funded, so scholarships are tight and must be divided and divvied carefully.

She had just one week of practice before the first scrimmage and two weeks before the first regular season game. The implementation of her style of play remains a work in progress. The Jaguars were 1-5 heading into Thursday’s game at Butler, but she is measuring their progress by hints of improvement rather than victories. Three of their losses have come by one goal, two by two goals.

“We are getting better,” she said. “We aren’t just telling ourselves that.”

She coaches an attacking style, not surprisingly, with emphasis on conditioning. That comes in part from playing for and coaching with Langdon Kumler, whose athletic background was in football and hockey. He admittedly didn’t know anything about soccer when he took over the Saints, but he knew hard work. She also draws from the close relationship she enjoyed with the teammates of her youth and works to create a bond that translates off the field as well.

“The one thing about Angela is that she has a heart for others and a heart for her players,” said Reilly Martin Szalewski, who played for Berry White’s first team at Brebeuf (which finished 22-1) and became an all-Big Ten player at University of Michigan. “She definitely brought out the best in me. She invests so much time and energy into the game and into the development of players.

“She’s not only a coach. She becomes a friend and mentor. She attended a lot of my games at Michigan, and we still talk once a month or so. She came to my wedding and came to my baby shower. She’s truly a special person.”

There are many ways for an athlete and coach to be heard. Ultimately, however, it’s about having the last word, whether spoken or not.•

__________

Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.