Rebecca Christ: Rebecca Christ is entering her first season as head coach of the Farmersville girls soccer team. Photo courtesy Farmersville ISD

By David Wolman

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In searching for its next head girls soccer coach, Farmersville ultimately decided to hire from within. 

Assistant coach Rebecca Christ has been elevated to the role of head coach. Christ was hired by Farmersville ISD last year and served as an assistant for one season under former head coach Krystal Mikeska, who is now the head coach at Royse City.  

For Christ, it’s an opportunity—both personally and professionally—that she couldn’t pass up.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “It’s been kind of something that I’ve wanted to do. My daughter plays soccer in Farmersville, and she did when I coached at McKinney. I’d really like to get the chance to coach her when she gets to high school. I want to build this program in a way where the kids who come here are treated like the way that I treat my daughter and be a family.” 

Christ brings more than 15 years of coaching experience at the high school and collegiate levels to Farmersville. She began her coaching career as a graduate assistant with the Dallas Baptist University women’s soccer team for 2½ years before moving to the high school level where she was the head coach at Waco High. Christ went on to coach at King High School in Corpus Christi and Princeton before serving as the head coach at McKinney from 2019-24.  

Coaching at Farmersville has been a different experience, Christ said, given how the program is only in its seventh year and is in Class 4A, as opposed to McKinney, which is in Class 6A.

“It’s definitely a different type of program because of how young it is,” she said. “I’m going to take the upper level type of play that I experienced while at McKinney and grow that into our style at Farmersville.”

Mikeska only coached at Farmersville for two seasons, but the Lady Farmers made drastic improvement under her watch.

This past season can be viewed as the best in program history.

Farmersville won five district games— most in a single season—earned a historic 3-2 upset win over state-ranked Frisco Panther Creek and came within one win of making the playoffs for the first time.

 “I’m coming here in the same situation where I left off at McKinney,” Christ said. “My last year at McKinney, we were one game away from making the playoffs. It was the same thing here last year when Farmersville came up one win short of making the playoffs. I’m going to continue to make sure that we put in the same amount of work to help us get to where we want to be. Once we make that jump and get into the playoffs, we want to continue to stay there.”

Farmersville lost four seniors from this year’s team to graduation, but the Lady Farmers are expected to bring back several key players that have been crucial to their success. Senior midfielder Natalie Taylor is expected to take on a bigger role offensively this upcoming season. Named the District 11-4A utility player of the year each of the last two seasons, she scored 20 goals during her junior season. Junior defender Syah Surles was named the district’s newcomer of the year. Senior Zoey Mann started at goalkeeper most of last season.

“We definitely have some good building blocks,” Christ said. “We also have some kids who transferred in and freshmen that will help us. Replacing four seniors will be a task. It’s just knowing where the kids will fit into the program.”