By Jim Fenton
BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- She arrived on the campus of Bridgewater State University in the late summer of 2006, a teen-aged freshman on the women's soccer team.
Yasmina Carvalho has fond memories about the four-year stay at BSU where she developed into one of the top defenders in the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference and earned a physical education degree.
“I always say I'd cut my finger off to go back to college and do the whole collegiate experience again exactly how I did it, just because I grew so much as an individual those four years,” said Carvalho. "You don't realize how being a young female athlete, how much you can learn and how much you can grow and how much you learn about other people and other things.
“Those four years put a stamp on who I am today and allowed me to understand that I've got to keep growing into a better person every day.”
Little did Carvalho realize back in her days as a student-athlete that Bridgewater State would remain a central part of her life nearly 20 years after graduating.
Carvalho is now in her 10th year as the head coach of the Bears women's soccer team, compiling a 40-13-5 record in the MASCAC and a 78-63-15 mark overall since being hired in 2014.
In July, the 2006 Brockton High School graduate became a full-time employee of the university, hired as the intramural coordinator for the athletics and recreation department.
After working in the Brockton school system for 12 years, including ten as a physical education teacher, Carvalho decided to change her career path and is now back on the BSU campus for more than just women's soccer.
“Five years ago, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue teaching the rest of my life,” said Carvalho. “That's when I brainstormed about what I needed to do next. BSU was awesome working with me. It's nice that all the things I've been hoping for and wishing for finally came true.
“I (originally) thought I'd be a physical education teacher the rest of my life. I thought I'd be in the gym or outside teaching young kids all the basics and enjoying that. That's not the route it went, but I'm honestly probably the happiest I've been in six or seven years. That's kudos to my new career path and being at BSU.”
As a player at BSU, Carvalho appeared in 11 games as a freshman in '06 because starting all 50 games she appeared in the next three seasons.
Carvalho was a three-time All-MASCAC selection and was the BSU captain, helping her team win the 2008 conference regular-season title.
After graduation, she was an assistant coach at Stonehill College in 2011 and 2012 and spent one season as an assistant at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Bridgewater State hired Carvalho as its head coach in 2014, and the program has won at least five MASCAC games six times. She was the conference coach of the year in 2016 and 2018, and the Bears are 3-3 overall and 2-0 in the MASCAC this season.
Having gone through the BSU program four seasons and being a graduate gives Carvalho inside knowledge, and the experience from her student-athlete days comes in handy as a coach.
“I had a phenomenal coach in Sugar (Andrea O'Connor), who just understood how to support her players in a different light and her husband Michael, who just taught me everything I needed to know about the tactics of soccer from the defensive eye. Any type of communication I did as a player then is the same type of communication that I'm teaching my players.
“They taught me so much. My four years were phenomenal, and I couldn't ask for a better experience.”
Carvalho thinks back to how O'Connor dealt with some things that went on during her freshman year and how a negative turned into a positive.
“I'll just never forget two specific moments in my career, and they were both in my freshman year,” said Carvalho. "One of the times I unfortunately made a mistake and got in trouble with the team, and she brought me into her office, and I was thinking, 'I'm going to get in huge trouble here. I am done for. She's going to tear me apart.'
“And the only thing she said to me was, 'Do you understand what you did?' And I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'Are you holding yourself accountable for it,' and I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'As long as you make a mistake and you don't repeat the mistake, all I can do is respect you as a human and that's all I ask you to do for us as your team, respect us and follow the rules.'
“From then on, I didn't lose one ounce of respect for her because she reminded me that I'm not only there to play soccer and get an education, but I'm also there as a human being. And she also related to my culture at the end of freshman year. She said I reminded her of Jess Moura, a favorite Portuguese player she had three or four years before me. She said, 'If you just put in the work and understand what type of player you can be, the sky's the limit for you.'
“From then on, I hit the ground running and tried to please her as much as I could because I knew she had my back 100 percent by identifying with my culture and by identifying that I was a human. I'll just never forget those two moments. They stick out to me. I try to do the same thing with my players.”
Andrea O'Connor, the program's all-time winningest coach with 96 victories from 1999-2009, said she recognized Carvalho's leadership qualities during her playing career.
After a quiet freshman year in '06, Carvalho emerged as a force on defense and developed into a team leader.
“By sophomore year, I put her at center back and said, 'You are my captain, so to speak, on the field. It doesn't matter if you have the armband or not. You run the show and are the commander-in-chief out there.' She just had that ability on and off the field to get the team going.
“It's one thing to be a leader on the field. The team is always a bunch of different personalities, different walks of life. To find that captain who can bring them all together and make them feel connected, that is what Yas did. That's what I think she's carried on as a coach.
“She's the kind of coach you'd want coaching your daughter. You know it's more than what's going on on the field. It's being a great role model and leader. She's just a stellar young woman. I'm not surprised by her success.”
Carvalho was in her mid-20s with no head coaching experience when she took over the BSU program. That first season in 2014 remains the lone sub-.500 year for Carvalho, whose team is always around the top of the MASCAC standings.
“Ten years ago, at the age of 26, I wasn't sure what I was doing,” said Carvalho. “I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I had no idea how. I started to realize year after year that I can't control how my players think, how they play. All I can do is do my best in supporting them and what they're trying to achieve in their goals and in their life in general.
“We're all here to win a championship. We're all here to get all the accolades. That's great. But the main thing is these young ladies are going to go out into the world in two, three, four years and they're going to have to understand how they're going to handle themselves and understand there's going to be some really hard times but those times are just going to make you better.”
Carvalho is looking forward to growing the intramural sports program on campus and knows that being around all day will help strengthen the soccer program as well.
“I'm running a program that could possibly turn into something that is bigger than it already is,” she said of the intramurals. “And it's so much easier to navigate all the things I have to do for the soccer team now. I'm there all the time. Everything's in one spot. It makes it a lot easier to be there for the team and organize things and do things we could never do before because I'd be at Brockton High all day.”