Overview:
Vom Steeg’s career record of 294-134-62 includes a victory over UCLA in the 2006 NCAA championship match
The missionary’s son finally reached a crossroads in soccer a dozen years ago.
Tim Vom Steeg may have kicked around Brazil as a child, but he planted deep stakes at UC Santa Barbara when his spikes first met the turf of Harder Stadium in 1985.
Four years as an unyielding defender evolved into a coaching career that enters its silver-anniversary season on Friday. His Gauchos will kick off their home opener against Oral Roberts at 7 p.m.
An offer from North Carolina State in 2011 did tempt him to hit the Tobacco Road.
“I had to ask myself, ‘What do you want out of your career … and your life?’” Vom Steeg told Noozhawk.
It took him only a decade to achieve every goal he’d set when he took over a failing UCSB soccer program in 1999.
Vom Steeg reached the NCAA’s College Cup Final Four in 2004. He broke the Gaucho record for career coaching wins in 2005. He won the NCAA championship in 2006.
He also renovated the rusting hulk of Harder Stadium into the glittering home of the 2010 College Cup. UCSB won the bid after drawing soccer crowds that exceeded all others across the country.
It didn’t take long for the athletic directors at every power conference to know the name Tim Vom Steeg.
North Carolina State wanted to sign that name to a contract after its longtime coach, George Tarantini, retired in 2011.
“It was the best offer I got,” Vom Steeg recalled. “After all the things we’d done, I was certainly open to the opportunity to coach in the best conference in the country and maybe move on from what we had done.
“Maybe we’d done everything we could at UCSB.”
But an affinity for his alma mater still smolders deep inside Vom Steeg.
It had flared into a full burn many years earlier when another coach from North Carolina State disparaged his beloved university just two days before Christmas 1987.
“Look,” he said in recollection, pausing for emphasis, “I am a Gaucho.”
Vom Steeg had just completed his junior season and was working at the school’s basketball arena — then known as the Campus Events Center.
“I really enjoyed watching the shootarounds,” he said.
He was especially thrilled to open the arena’s doors that day for the North Carolina State basketball team. Coach Jim Valvano’s Wolfpack had won the NCAA basketball championship less than four years earlier.
But then he heard the knocks of Valvano.
“He was sitting there and just bagging on the fact that we had pull-out bleachers,” Vom Steeg recalled. “He was making fun of UCSB and making fun of the Events Center.
“We blew them out by 20 that night, and it was awesome. I didn’t like that arrogance. I’ve had an anti-East Coast bias ever since.”
The Boy from Brazil
He hadn’t yet turned 3 when his parents, the Rev. Al and Jane Vom Steeg, brought their family to a small town in southern Brazil to spread The Word of their Methodist ministry.
Young Tim soon found that it took a village to raise a soccer player in Brazil.
“There was one school in the town,” he recalled. “It was in a four-story building that served as a grammar school until noon, a high school from 1 to 5 p.m., and then an adult school from 6 to 9.
“We’d get home from school and have lunch, and then the game would kick off at 1 o’clock.
The matches wouldn’t end until the parents called their kids home for dinner.
“There was no television — there was just one TV station there. We had no phones, no videos, no Xboxes to occupy our time. There was no form of entertainment except our soccer game at 1 o’clock.”
“It was like that every day,” Vom Steeg said. “I think we maybe took a day off for Christmas.”
His future as a defensive back was dictated by a Brazilian pecking order.
“I had a brother who was two years older — and the older you were, the more you played up the field,” Vom Steeg explained. “As one of the younger players in the game, they stuck me on defense.”
Portuguese became his first language. It went by the wayside, however, when his parents returned to the United States.
“We moved to Northern California when I was around 9 or 10,” Vom Steeg said. “There wasn’t even much Spanish spoken up there that would’ve allowed me to hang on to a little bit more of my Portuguese.”
Santa Barbara-Bound
Vom Steeg spent his teenage years in Fresno and was recruited to play for the then-nationally ranked soccer program at Fresno State. His destiny was altered, however, by just one recruiting trip to Santa Barbara.
“I fell in love with everything about the town and the program,” he said.
Vom Steeg’s bruising style of defense quickly earned the respect of his teammates. He was voted team captain by his junior year and nicknamed “Stitch” after a particularly rambunctious road trip to UC Irvine.
“He ripped his ear open while the team was scrumming in the back of the van,” recalled Bob Tuler, a former Gaucho goalkeeper and assistant coach.
“The biggest thing about Tim was that he was a born leader.”
Vom Steeg, an honors student in history, was also smart enough to win UCSB’s Golden Eagle Award as its top scholar-athlete.
His familial attachment to UCSB grew even stronger after he met the girl next door at his Tropicana Gardens dormitory. He married Almeria just a year after her graduation with a degree in communications.
“Just another match,” Almeria mused during halftime of the Gauchos’ 2004 College Cup semifinal against Duke.
“I sat in Harder Stadium and watched him play all four years, and then I watched him coach all those games at (Santa Barbara) City College.”
She had more matches to watch when Vom Steeg continued playing professionally for Real Santa Barbara. The club folded in 1990 after just two seasons.
He then turned to coaching, getting his whistle wet as Abe Jahadhmy’s assistant at San Marcos High School. He continued on to SBCC to start the Vaqueros’ program from scratch in 1992.
Vom Steeg guided them to five Western State Conference championships in just seven seasons with a win-loss record of 120-18-7.
SBCC won the California State Championship in 1996 and advanced to the State Final Four three other times.
The California Community College Coaches Association inducted Vom Steeg into its Hall of Fame in 2008.
Almeria also served SBCC as a teacher. Several Vaquero players learned the hard way that she could be just as tough in the classroom as her husband was on the pitch.
“Everyone thought it would be an easy class for them,” she said. “Well, I flunked about four of them.
“They wouldn’t come to class and do the work, and so I’d just tell them, ‘Sorry, honey.’”
The Sons Also Rise
Vom Steeg was still playing soccer on the side when he and his wife had their first child during the spring of 1997. Ken Newendorp recalled him arriving for one of their Central Coast Soccer League matches barely five hours after the birth.
“Justin had been born at around 7 or 8 in the morning, and Tim showed up for the match at noon, unshaven, and still wearing his hospital wristband,” Newendorp pointed out.
“He said he was naming him Justin, as in born just-in time for him to play.”
Second son Carson arrived in 1999 shortly before his dad was hired to revive a UCSB program that had just suffered through a 2-17-1 season.
Tim coached both boys on their AYSO soccer teams as soon as they came of age.
“Dave Wolf told us that he coached his kids’ teams for a couple of years and then thought he should let someone else do it,” Almeria said, referring Westmont College’s recently retired head coach. “But Tim loved doing it.
“He was playing with them in the backyard for the fun of it as soon and as long as he could.”
Vom Steeg coached all four of his sons in youth soccer and even on their Little League baseball teams. All four eventually became Gauchos.
Justin turned pro in 2016 when he signed as a goalkeeper for Fortuna Düsseldorf of Germany’s Bundesliga.
He also played in the United Soccer League for the reserve squads of both the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Portland Timbers before retiring earlier this year.
Carson is currently playing on the back line for the USL’s Memphis 901.
Vom Steeg’s two youngest sons, twins Jared and Caden, are on UCSB’s current roster.
Caden started all 20 matches last year as a defensive back for a Gaucho team that finished 10-4-6. A broken toe kept him out of Saturday’s exhibition match against Westmont.
“He’s in the final stages of being cleared,” coach Vom Steeg said. “He should be ready at the start of the season.”
Jared got 15 starts in the midfield as a freshman and five more as a sophomore before a recurring injury forced him out of the lineup. He plans to redshirt this season.
“He had an issue with his foot and ankle that goes back to his high school days,” his father said. “He’s on his third surgery, with this hopefully being the answer.”
Gabbing About the Gauchos
Carson spent his own injury redshirt year of 2019 as a color analyst for UCSB soccer’s ESPN+ broadcasts. Brother Jared is considering the same gig this year.
“I think he’d be a little different than Carson was, but he’s got a lot of insight,” Dad said. “He knows the sport really, really well … And of course, he knows our team.
“But we are going to miss him this season.”
A feeling for family could best explain coach Vom Steeg’s decision against running with the Wolfpack 12 years ago.
“Certainly raising four boys in a place like Santa Barbara was always going to be attractive,” he said. “It’s not that you can’t take your kids and build something somewhere else, but I played here and came back here to develop this program.
“We had just turned the corner back then. The school finally kicked in and we became fully supported.”
Their Cup Runneth Over
Community interest in the Gauchos took root during their magical, 21-2-2 season of 2004. They were ranked No. 1 for part of the year and drew 11,214 — by far the school record at the time — when they played host to an NCAA Elite 8 match against Virginia Commonwealth.
Those fans rushed the field in celebration after a 4-1 victory put UCSB into its first College Cup.
That reaction reminded the former Events Center worker of the time the Gaucho basketball team upset nationally ranked UNLV in 1988.
“That ’04 season was the culmination with a group of players that were recruited in 2001 to a program that had never made the NCAA Tournament,” Vom Steeg pointed out. “We were building toward that every year.
“We made the tournament in ’02 and won a game. Then got to the Round of 16 at St. John’s in ’03. And then to actually have that moment in ’04 with the whole town coming out to experience it was very special.
“That group set out on this three-year journey to put us on the map.”
The Gauchos made it to the NCAA Promised Land two years later when they beat UCLA 2-1 for the national championship on a frozen field in St. Louis.
“Your program gets set apart when you win a national championship,” Vom Steeg said. “Every conversation that we’ve had since then, whether it’s with recruits or other coaches trying to schedule games, the championship puts you in a different club.
“I just kept seeing positive things going forward.”
He’s getting positive vibes about this season with the return of Chava Aguilar and Alexis Ledoux at forward, and Lucas Gonzalez and Nemo Philipp in the midfield.
A rigid defense is backed by All-America candidate Leroy Zeller, a senior who Vom Steeg insists is “among the top three goalkeepers in the country.”
He’s also recruited enough talent to go “at least two deep with no drop off at every position.”
Vom Steeg enters this 25th season at UCSB with a career record of 294-134-62. It’s a safe bet that he will reach the marvelous milestone of a 300th Gaucho victory this season.
He can even reminisce about his earliest days of soccer with junior transfer Henrique Bueno, a forward from Sao Paolo, Brazil.
This year’s roster includes players from five continents, hailing from Europe, Africa and Asia as well as both North and South America.
“Henrique is a player with a great background,” Vom Steeg said, “although he does arrive a little too late to help me with my Portuguese.”
They expect to give everyone a lot to talk about this season no matter what language they speak.